This is an interesting case study for everyone.I hope my readers from outside India give me their sincere opinion on this and not dodge the question. Here goes.
Recently, at a conference I remember the CEO of a popular Indian SEO company proclaim that their company ranks high on Google for the term “SEO India”. And this should show others how good they are and what great deal of business they do.
Honestly, this seemed like a baseless statement to me because, for any SEO company, ranking high for a particular term cannot (underline) bring them real business. I’m talking about real good, genuine, healthy business. From my experience, I’ve learned that good business always come from referrals. And for referrals, there needs to be an incredible amount of credibility towards the company. By just ranking high for the term SEO India, can give you probably one time clients, but if you lack in quality, that’s the end of it. For it’s a service not a product we sell.
And I’ve enough reasons to think that company’s that boasts of ranking high for the term SEO India are bogus themselves! First off, the term SEO India, as suggested by the CEO gentleman itself is not a popular word among clients (US and UK predominantly). Because of the poor quality of services offered by many SEO companies in India, there is a widespread belief that all SEO’s in India are weak, which is not true.Yes, there are weak ones, but not all are.
Out of all my clients that I deal with today, almost everyone (this is shameful) has had a bad experience with an Indian SEO. The common issues raised are that, the so called “professional SEO’s” does not reveal to the clients what they do with their site. They don’t tell them where they are sourcing the incoming links from, they don’t tell them why they are using a particular keyword on the meta tags, they don’t even tell them what they should do with their duplicate content on the site.
I’ve heard this issue with many clients and I think they have all good reasons to complain that Indian SEOs are poor quality. Now, if we further investigate into this problem, we can find some interesting equations.
Normally when a client wants to outsource their SEO work to India, they’d normally go googling. And they are likely to go ahead with the first few companies that they find on Google ranks. The problem arises here. Out of the top rankers for the term SEO India, on Google, many so called “professional” companies use keyword stuffing and hidden text to make it to the top.
Why that frown on your face? Check it out yourself. I don’t want to take names but it is disappointing to see that even in the top results, many of them use the words SEO India, SEM India, SEO company India and many similar keywords either extensively on the top header, in the ALT tags, in the title, more like spam often repeated and in lines with black hat methods.
One simple question here -
If these companies will do such kind of unethical SEO practices to get better ranks themselves, would not they do similar unethical strategies to the clients?
Indeed they will. Now, that explains it all. Doesn’t it ?
Okay, coming back to my readers outside India, I’m just curious to know, what keywords will you use to search for an outsourced SEO firm?
Google Trends shows that nobody outside India uses the search term “SEO India” on Google. Absolutely none. My opinion is that it is the SEO firms in India that are competing among themselves to rank for this term (See the number of ad results on Google), and not any genuine potential client. He might be searching for other keywords but definitely not SEO India. In order to test this out, I’ve changed my title tags and metas to feature the keyword SEO India, I’m just curious to see how much traffic this change is going to bring?
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I think you did hit the nail here.
Most of the folks i deal with have this problem not just with indian SEO’s but with “indians” as a whole:
1, They are not very commited
2, They’re quality checking mechanism is shite.
3, They’re not clear on deliverables.
4, They have no idea what they’re talking about.
5, They dont worry about the “long term” goals of the client – They’re aim is to make “xxxx$ this month”
I think SEO is about to “die” thanks to loads of “seo cowboys” out there who just read Aaron Wall’s book and claim to know everything.
And yes, rankings are shit.
I dont rank for any major keywords on google imho – But i get more business via my website thanks to referrals whereas another person i know ranks for 20-30ish keywords like “seo company” blah blah and gets no business from his website.
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I just checked some of the search terms you suggested and the degree of keyword stuffing is amazing!
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Mani Karthik Replied:
PC, some(not all) of them even have hidden text. you can find the classic examples of keyword stemming, keyword spamming, title spamming in the top 5. Weird but true, so eat it
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point 6:They don’t say No to any of the client’s requirement and try to oblige them for everything and the client may consider this funny…as they know that it is a requirement that cannot be fulfilled…
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Mani Karthik Replied:
On target Rajesh
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Well said Mani! I can understand what you’re feeling. Well there was this post by DaveN where some indian firm was asking for a link. I wrote an article about it here http://www.manishpandey.com/2007/how-not-to-ask-for-a-link/
The thing is Indian SEOs don’t want to give time in learning. They just want to do SEO right away! SEO isn’t rocket science, if a person is dedicated enough then I think he could beat even Aaron!
For Aaron, SEO is life…If anybody else makes SEO his life then he could also be recognized as him, it’s just a matter of time and knowledge.
All the best for the experiment to check the worth of “seo india”.
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Mani Karthik Replied:
Manish.. I’d agree with you. I had seen your comments at Dave’s article earlier too. Good article and nice to meet you.
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here’s a first hand experience to add to the post.. I generally get around 3-4 genuine SEO leads every month from my blog. My blog do rank for a lot of keywords but none like SEO Company and similar terms. Its not that I take up all 3-4 projects every month ( I don’t have that bandwidth at this point) but in most cases I do ask those people how did they find me and in 85% cases they have been searching for some SEO related issues like 301 redirection guide, something related to website content or Google analytics and they find my blog and only after going through few posts when they find the profile credible they care to contact me.
So the bottom line is to build up credibility for yourself and your company through your content and am sure anyone who know the abc of SEO would not be impressed by a #1 ranking with hidden texts.
Another funny fact, my blog ranks #1 in Google for the keyword Experienced SEO for last 1 year or more and till date I have received hardly 10 visitors from that keyword — so what should we call these terms ?? may be “vanity keywords” .. what say ?
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Hi Saptarshi, I guess I’ve seen you at the Delhi SEO meet, i recalled it from your picture! Who said Internet is a BIG place? LOL…
Well, coming to the main point, how does one get credibility? He comes online, makes a blog, copies stuffs from here and there (i’m not talking about you, i’m just putting my points), ranks for a few terms and considers himself as a hard core SEO and starts his SEO company. Which shuts down even before starting, or if he’s dedicated starts to do things which are shady! Like for example I’ve seen many SEOs just build up a network of sites and put their keywords on all of them, something like a 3-way linking and they did get some ranks!
Well this is not SEO. It’s just spamming and cheating the search engines. Well they are becoming smarter and smarter and surely hit you back! For few people it did too.
The only way you become credible is by making networks and helping people get what they want! Ever wondered how Danny got his name out? It’s his name what says for him.
So, the only thing which helps you is to help people and network. Don’t charge clients for submitting their sites to Google, LOL…Many SEOs do that and charge a hefty sum. Build a repo and you’ll just be awesome!
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This was right on, easy to follow, and so right. I don’t think anybody wants to get downgraded by google for bad practices like keyword stuffing or hidden text, etc when if they just do it right…they will be set with a little time.
Lynda
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Hi Mani
Your post is spot on.
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Hi
I still feel that search engines are not strict enough to stop keyword stuffing completely.
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Mani -
Really, great one !! We are working for each others.
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Adword’s external keyword shows 3,600 searches for the keywords seo india. So how come it gets no traffic?? Just wondering…
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