Friday, April 19, 2013

Bad SEO Client Case Study - Your SEO is Complete

The following Bad SEO Client Blog post is slightly embellished for entertainment purposes… but only slightly. 

The client – we’ll call them “Super Awesome, Inc.” – needs SEO help. They sign on with us for a year. A year. One calendar year. 52 weeks, 365 days in succession. Their contract starts today; it ends a year from today. By the time we’re done with this client, we will have gone through all four seasons and we will all be a full year older. Let’s just keep that perspective in mind. Just to clarify, you, our loyal reader, are X years old as you read this. By the time this contract is done with Super Awesome, Inc., you will be X+1. That means you’ll be a full year older.

Let’s also keep in mind that Super Awesome, Inc. has spent the past 10 years fucking up their website. Buying links, stuffing keywords into alt tags, putting black text on a black background, etc. When they finally decide they need help, we say, “Great – we can help. We’ve picked apart your website a bit and see where a lot of the problems may be.” Super Awesome, Inc’s CEO – we’ll call him “Jimmy D. Bag” – signs the agreement for a year and we get to work.

We have our first meeting with them 2 weeks into the project and show them the preliminary findings on their fucked-up site. In a nice way, we tell Mr. Bag, that his site is super-awesomely fucked up. It is no longer Super Awesome as their business name implies.

“Mr. Bag, in our preliminary research, these are the numerous problems we found with your site.” 

After a few moments of uncomfortable silence and an angry sigh from their end of the conference line, Mr. Bag proceeds to ask a question which, in his mind, is a very eloquent one since he likes to think of himself as a no-nonsense, shoot-from-the-hip, tell-it-like-it-is kinda guy… not an ignorant, impatient asshole with no concept of reality. Indeed, his question is so profound in his mind that he believes he is about to turn the world of SEO on its head with his insightful revelation.

Bad client: “If you saw all these problems, why didn’t you fix them?!” 
SEO: “…Beg pardon?”

Bad client: “Jesus H- (unintelligible grunting/growling sound). We’re paying you for SEO, right?”

SEO: “Right.”

Bad client: “So, if you’re finding all these problems, why aren’t they fixed?!”

SEO: “Not following, Mr. Bag.”

Bad client: “What are we paying you for?! I don’t care what the problems are! I just want them fixed! Isn’t that what we’re paying you for?!”

SEO: “Mr. Bag, we’re two weeks into the project. This is going to take at least a year to fix – probably more.”

Bad client: “Bullshit! It can’t be that hard!”

SEO: “You’re right, Mr. Bag, it’s not. We were just kidding. We fixed everything in two weeks. Your SEO is complete.” 
Aaaaaaaaaaand…we hung up the phone. Keep sending the checks, Mr. Bag, and thanks for being another bad SEO client for the Blog.

Wednesday, April 10, 2013

A Bad SEO Client Jingle from SEO Project Managers

Sometimes not all clients are bad SEO clients, but it's our internal struggles that make us want to bash in our brains.

Today we couldn't get the Three's Company jingle out of our heads so decided to have a little fun and let out our frustrations....again....

Three’s Company – Project Management Version 

Come and walk in our cube… 
We’ve been avoiding you 
Where the meeting notes are hers and hers and his 
Three’s company too. 

Come and ruin our day… 
Deliver something’s that due 
It’s a stressful space you need to be put in your place 
Three’s company too. 

You’ll see that failure is chronic and clients are calling for you… 
Get in the conference room 
Three’s company too!!!

You Are a Bad Asshat SEO Client NOT Asset

asshat not asset
ASS-HAT not ASS-ET!
Dear Asshats - You are an ASS, and your ass sits on your head - you are an asshat, not to be confused with something useful like being an asset

Asshats are prime examples of bad SEO clients.

Wednesday, April 3, 2013

Just Admit It - Bad SEO Clients Buy Links

This conversation is partially accurate (inflated for humorous purposes)
Sample bad SEO client conversation:
 
SEO: You bought links, right?
CLIENT: Well, we didn’t buy links – we paid an agency and they bought links… for us.
SEO: So, then, you bought links.
CLIENT: (Indignantly) I wouldn’t say that.
SEO: (Sigh) So, what would you say happened, then?
CLIENT: I already told you – we hired an agency who may have bought links and had them pointed at our site.
SEO: So then, there are links out there that point to your site that someone paid for, right?
CLIENT: Well… we didn’t tell them to buy links for us…
SEO: Right… but there are links out there on the internet that point to your site, right?
CLIENT: Right.
SEO: And some of them you earned organically, right?
CLIENT: Right.
SEO: And the others were paid for… by someone… and those paid-for links point back to your site, right?
CLIENT: Well… I don’t know if that’s accurate…
SEO (violently hits the mute button on the Polycom): “Motherfucker, you bought links! You fucked your own site, you asshole! Just admit it!” Then the SEO looks down to see that the he missed the mute button – the client heard everything. A brief moment of panic fills his bugged-out eyes while he stares at the Polycom, begging for the light to magically turn red from green… five seconds ago. While that doesn’t happen, a very uncomfortable silence fills the room. Just before the SEO has a chance to apologize, the Client speaks up.
CLIENT: “Well, okay, I guess so. But I don’t think you need to-“
SEO: “Look, I’m sorry – it’s not you. It’s just that we deal with this all the time and no one wants to admit that they bought links or had someone else buy links for them… that and I totally missed the mute button before I cussed you out. So sorry about that… but can we move forward now? Now that we all know you bought links?”

Buying links is like watching porn

I heard a comedian a long time ago – back in the days of the 976-numbers when you could call a 976 number and get charged a few bucks to hear a sexy-voiced woman (who probably looked like a wildebeest with stubble) pretend to pleasure herself to your nerdy, pathetic, nasally-voice on the phone. The comedian had the crowd going. He was on a roll, until he mentioned something to do with how everyone watches porn… and the crowd went silent, aside from a couple of golf claps and polite, laugh-like murmurs. The comedian stared down the crowd kind of angrily, and said, “Oh… right… no one else here watches porn. It’s a 10-billion dollar-a-year industry and every year I get a bill for 10-billion dollars. Fuck you people.”

Buying links is kinda like that. Just admit you did it if you did it. It’s not like you did anything uniquely wrong. Wrong, sure – but not uniquely wrong. Doing something uniquely wrong is like what the Manson Family did. Buying links, aside from being like watching porn, is also akin to professional athletes doing steroids and popping HGH pills like peanut M&Ms. You all do it; you’re all breaking the rules; you all got caught – just move on and fix the problem, already.

We see tons of clients with absolutely wretched content, let alone overall subject matter that no one would ever willingly seek out, yet they have been ranking at the top of Google for, like, ten years for all kinds of (largely-irrelevant) keyword phrases that they clearly paid for. They come to us after getting knocked in the dirt by Penguin… then they have the nerve to try to tell us they never bought any links. Here’s another analogy to help you understand how ridiculous you sound when you deny that you bought links:

500-LB PATIENT: “Doctor, I’m feeling faint, my left arm is numb and my chest feels like there’s a Buick parked on top of it. What’s wrong?”
DOCTOR: “Your symptoms sound like a heart attack. How are your eating habits? Do you exercise?”  
500-LB PATIENT: “I jog 5 miles a day and I eat exclusively lean, white-meat chicken with green leafy vegetables daily for every meal.”
DOCTOR: “Yeah… you need open-heart surgery, fatass… and put down that fucking donut when you talk to me.”

You bought links, asshole. Just admit it - you're the perfect example of a bad SEO client.