Professional SEO - do you offer references?

I, Brian · 12-03-2003, 06:45 AM

Something that occured to me today - do professional SEOs here actually offer genuine customer referrals and past work, if asked?

By that I mean customer referrals from bona-fide paying clients.

I wondered whether that would be seen too risky -

1/ in exposing client sites to abuse reports, if relevant,
2/ because other SEOs may simlpy use it to collect customer information for themselves.

Curious on opinions here.

John Scott · 12-03-2003, 07:38 AM

I do - I'm guessing most SEO's only offer their "whitehat" clients as examples.

PhilC · 12-03-2003, 07:42 AM

I've never done that, but I've never been asked to do it. In fact I make a point of not revealing my clients.

I, Brian · 12-03-2003, 01:47 PM

Thanks for the replies - I'm expecting that people are going to start asking for examples of prior work - I guess I play it by ear, though. I figure that customer confidentiality is extremely important here.

Fruit & Veg · 12-05-2003, 11:15 AM

The online marketing agency I used to work at (doing SEO) had a clients list page - whether they were SEO clients or other wasn't specified.

Testimonials and stuff are pretty false - I ain't going to let you know of someone who was disappointed am I?

Plus, each site is different. If you give a client a personal quote relating specifically to their site then you can show that you know what you're doing (without giving specific details of what you're actually going to do).

However, we kept a couple of rankings up our sleeve that they could check out, just to show that we weren't complete monkeys.

I'm just off to have a banana break and play on the tire swing.

Mel · 12-06-2003, 05:07 AM

I stress that I keep all details of my clients and their sites confidential, but I do have a couple of clients who have agreed to respond to email or phone inquiries as to the effectiveness of my services.

FWIW, the best clients seem to be able to make up their own minds without references, and those that require them almost always require much more coddling than others. I charge a more or less fixed fee so those who besiege me with emails simply get less time on their SEO than those who leave me to get on with it.

altyfc · 12-08-2003, 04:57 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by I, Brian

1/ in exposing client sites to abuse reports

If they are professional, then this issue shouldn't be a 'risk'.

Aaron

I, Brian · 12-09-2003, 04:40 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by altyfc

Quote:

Originally Posted by I, Brian

1/ in exposing client sites to abuse reports

If they are professional, then this issue shouldn't be a 'risk'.

Aaron

Where non-whitehat SEO is involved, it absolutely would be.

altyfc · 12-09-2003, 07:05 AM

What do you mean by "non-whitehat SEO"?

Aaron

I, Brian · 12-09-2003, 02:47 PM

In simple terms, SEO covers a field of optimisation practices, some of which are generally used (ie, content SEO - title tag, h tags, etc), to the other extreme of things sometimes frowned upon by others (ie, doorway pages, spam pages, etc).

"Whitehat/compliant/Ethical" SEO tends to stay towards the content SEO end, whereas the "Blackhat" SEO is at the other, which will often blatantly challene the "rules" of search engines.

In highly competitive markets, although whitehat compliance can be stretched, my understanding is that Blackhat rules.

However, there remains the important point to be made that at no point does Google condone or consider acceptable any method of maipulating the SERPs - and this includes "Whitehat" SEO. too. Florida showed us that all too well.

altyfc · 12-09-2003, 03:10 PM

Thanks for the clarification.

Personally, I regard professional SEO as being SEO that doesn't attempt to challenge search engines' rules. Challenging their rules risks bans for the clients and therefore jeopardising (sp?) a client's site, which I personally don't regard as professional. Sure, it might achieve better results in the short term, but there is always that risk there.

Aaron

Fruit & Veg · 12-09-2003, 03:42 PM

'at no point does Google condone or consider acceptable any method of maipulating the SERPs'

Not true - http://www.google.com/webmasters/guidelines.html - talks about <title> tag, link text and alt tags.

I don't believe Florida update counted against 'optimized' sites. It DID re-rank sites so sites have to be optimized differently though - and that means the fun's been put back into the game.

Mel · 12-10-2003, 09:06 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fruit & Veg

'at no point does Google condone or consider acceptable any method of maipulating the SERPs'

Not true - http://www.google.com/webmasters/guidelines.html - talks about <title> tag, link text and alt tags.

I don't believe Florida update counted against 'optimized' sites. It DID re-rank sites so sites have to be optimized differently though - and that means the fun's been put back into the game.

If your idea of fun is way less than optimal serps from the most important search engine, then this should be a lot of fun for you, but for those who have built excellent sites with great content and great selling propositions, only to find that they have been replaced by directories no one every heard of or two page Geocities sites, its not that much fun.

The idea that because Google mentions the word title tag on a page it means that they condone the optimization of title tags, is just too far fetched to discuss.

Fruit & Veg · 12-10-2003, 09:43 AM

ehh???

On that Google page, point 4 - 'Think about the words users would type to find your pages, and make sure that your site actually includes those words within it.'

Point 6 - 'Make sure that your TITLE and ALT tags are descriptive and accurate.'

How more black and white do you want it?

I, Brian · 12-10-2003, 03:40 PM

SEO doesn't make title and alt tags descritpive and accurate - it makes them optimsied for SE's picking up keywords. Notice that Google refers to users, with the almost express implication of human users.

And altyfc - my understanding is that the SEO/client relationship is where the ethics actually kicks in. Misleading a client, or inadvertently having an important client site banned, would not be signs of either good business practice, or of professional SEO.

My understanding is that SEO is about challenging SE rules - however, there is bending rules, and there is plain breaking them. Google lists the offences on the page linked to above that it absolutely will not tolerate - once it becomes aware of them. However, ultimately, Google is under no obligation to tolerate any form of SEO, and makes absolutely no claim to condone the SEO industry.

Mel · 12-10-2003, 06:19 PM

And then there is the fact the what the search engine say and what the search engines do can be very diferent things.

I can show you examples where far out spam (like 20 sites in the same business owned by one company with every page of every site with anchor text links to the home page of every site) has been reported and they have assured the client that they will invesitgate and remove the site if they find them to be spamming thier index. The result is that all the sites remain and continue to rank in the top 5 for hundreds of search terms.

My experience has been that you are much less likely to attract a penalty, even if you are reported, if the page that the user sees is relevant to the search term. And that is as it should be IMO.