9 Signs Your SEO Is Not Competent

MICHAEL:
Hi guys, Michael here. Do you want a second opinion on your SEO? Head to theseoshow.co and hit the link in the header. We'll take a look under the hood at your SEO, your competitors and your market and tell you how you can improve. All right, let's get into the show.

INTRO: It's time for the SEO show where a couple of nerds talk search engine optimization so you can learn to compete in Google and grow your business online. Now here's your hosts, Michael and Arthur.

MICHAEL: Hello. And after a long time, welcome back to the SEO show. I am Michael Costin and I'm joined by Arthur Fabik.

ARTHUR: It's been a long time indeed. I know. And you know what? We promised that we would continue doing weekly episodes and then you disappeared, left, left me by myself. Yeah.

MICHAEL: All of my lonesome. I've been doing a lot of work from home the last couple of weeks and we just didn't get around to recording episodes, but we're back. We're back with a cracker, a cracker episode this week, a fun episode. You reckon it's fun? Yeah. You excited?

ARTHUR: I love trashing people.

MICHAEL: Oh, I didn't know that's what it was.

ARTHUR: It's not really trashing people, but it's, it's an interesting topic. It's a fun topic to talk about.

MICHAEL: It's one that we've pretty much stolen from the internet. We read an article, we saw an article on search engine land, nine warning signs. Your SEO consultant is not in capital letters competent. So we thought it'd be good to talk about that because we covered, I think in the early days of the show, um, dodgy SEO salesman tactics or something like that. Yeah. This is kind of a, in the same vein, but it's ground that we haven't really covered in a while. So, um, that we'd have a little chat about it. Let's do it. So warning sign number one, their name is Arthur Fabik.

ARTHUR: Very funny. Very funny. I'm just like reading the intro to the article. And how it's talking about how there isn't, you know, like any official SEO courses, like there's no degree, there's no paid courses or anything. It's just something that people pick up and learn a lot of the time.

MICHAEL: It's the university of life. Basically. The school of hard knocks.

ARTHUR: That's it. That's it. So it is interesting. There isn't any kind of like real certification or anything, which is,

MICHAEL: Almost like you look at mortgage brokers and they have to do a certain level of qualification and it's governed. Yes. Other professional services, lawyers, accountants.

ARTHUR: I mean, even Google ads to a degree, you get certified. Yeah.

MICHAEL: Well, normally if you're really like a Google premier partner these days is a sign that you're doing things wrong in terms of, you know, it's good for Google and their back pocket.

ARTHUR: It's a whole different story right there.

MICHAEL: Yeah, but there's no governing body industry body for SEO for SEO. There's no Lord of SEO. They used to be Barry. I just said there is no Lord Lord.

ARTHUR: I thought I was the Lord of SEO.

MICHAEL: No, I just said warning sign one. Your name's after Fabian can't be the Lord. There used to be Matt Cutts back in the day. He was the closest that we had to a Lord of SEO, but again, he worked for Google. Can't really trust what he was saying, but, um, yeah, I guess we're going to take it up on ourselves to operate from a position of Lord of SEO and pass judgment on the warning signs that an SEO consultant is not competent. based on what we think.

ARTHUR: Yeah. So what's warning side number one outside of being me?

MICHAEL: Well, I would say, I guess if we start from the sales side of things, This article also covers this point, unrealistic promises or expectation setting at the very start. So skip sign one. Well, I'm not just going to read this through me off a little bit. I'm not just going to read this article verbatim. I'm going to put my own little spin on it and start on 0.2 instead of 0.1. But yeah, in the sales process, if they are making unrealistic promises, that is a sign they're not competent at best. At worst, they're a churn and burn operation trying to sign anyone and everyone.

ARTHUR: Right. That's an interesting point because how would a business owner know what is a realistic or unrealistic promise for someone that doesn't really understand SEO? They'll probably just believe what someone's telling them a lot of the time, which is why they can, you know, get away with doing stuff like this.

MICHAEL: I would say talk to a few different agencies or services because you'll start to get a feel for maybe what the baseline or like common thing is that they're recommending. Excuse me. Um, listen to shows like this, read like you, SEO takes time. You're not going to get to page one for best credit card in a month. or ever probably ever.

ARTHUR: So if someone's coming along going first page rankings in 90 days or you don't pay, that's when we always say, yeah, the dodgy ones though, that's a dodgy, um, they'll tell you keywords with no search volume or super long tail. Yes. So in theory they'll hit their KPI, but it doesn't mean anything.

MICHAEL: Double, triple or quadruple your business in 90 days or less. Guaranteed. Guaranteed that normally that should be a warning sign.

ARTHUR: I think any guarantee in SEO should be a warning sign because you can't guarantee anything. You can't guarantee the results like result guarantees.

MICHAEL: Yes. You can guarantee the work.

ARTHUR: Yeah. Yeah. But you mean, I mean like guaranteeing someone that they're going to be position one in X amount of time is impossible because there's just too many different variables outside of someone's control. Yep.

MICHAEL: So it's a sales tactic. Yeah. So you should see through it, see it for what it is. SEO SEO is a marathon, not a sprint, not a sprint. You're not absolutely sprinting to the top of page one in 90 days or less. unless it's an easy keyword, unless you already have good SEO. Unless they're lying, they're making it up to get you to sign on the dotted line. That's fair enough. That's a sign of an incompetent SEO.

ARTHUR: I agree.

MICHAEL: Warning sign number two.

ARTHUR: Which is actually which one on the list?

MICHAEL: Lack of transparency in what they're up to. What do you reckon?

ARTHUR: Yeah, no, I agree. You know, a lot of people will probably won't care what someone's up to, like a lot of business owners, they just want results. But for those that ask, be honest and be transparent as to what you're doing or why you're doing a certain thing if they ask, because it's important. If you're wanting to change something on the side or build specific links. Tell them why. Yep.

MICHAEL: That's it. That's all you have to do. If results aren't going that well, or if they're slow, don't hide from it. No. Steer into it and explain why. That always works. Yeah. It's a little bit slow, but here's what we're doing and here's why we think it'll work. That is to me, it's like confidence building. It's reassuring them. Yeah. Yeah. Hiding from if a campaign's not going well is a sign of an incompetent SEO.

ARTHUR: Lying about results or like, I guess maybe,

MICHAEL: Not lying, but maybe. Look at this keyword. It's best pitbull collar store in Tasmania. You're ranking first for it. That's it. Yeah.

ARTHUR: Isn't that amazing? Very selective reporting on stuff that makes them look good. Yeah. But then like.

MICHAEL: Yeah. And I would say lack of comms in general. So as an SEO, we call it singing. You should always be singing about what you're up to, results, um, good, the bad, the ugly, keeping in touch, communication breeds, trust. Absolutely not doing any of that. That's a sign of an incompetent SEO. You're not going to know that until you're working with them. So it doesn't help you if you're planning on engaging, but I guess you could ask people, you know, how do you stay in touch? Yes. How do you report? Exactly. What meetings do I get calls? Um, if any questions or that sort of stuff, I'll let you, I'll let you pick one from this list.

ARTHUR: Yeah. Let's go to number three. So it can't provide references or referrals or has outdated K case studies. Yup. Microphones blocking the screen here. It's really annoying. Um, I mean, yeah, I guess if someone is asking for a reference and you're a good SEO and you've been getting good results, you should be comfortable, you know, unless the person doesn't wanna speak to someone else, you should be comfortable giving references.

MICHAEL: I'm torn on this one about that particular one, because it's annoying. It is annoying. You're gonna go ask a client to be taking calls and acting as your salesperson.

ARTHUR: That's true, that's true. But I mean, you can always ask. Yeah. We've had clients in the past who have asked to speak to someone that we've worked with. And then I think from memory, everyone that we've asked say yes. Yeah, I do say, yeah. So it is, it is annoying to kind of bug someone else.

MICHAEL: They've got to spend their time going into bat for you. So I guess you should, but like really you should have a relationship where you can do that if you have to, if you're a good SEO that's been getting results.

ARTHUR: I guess the other point that outdated case studies, definitely. I mean, SEO changes all the time. So if someone's got case studies from 2016, that's a lifetime ago in SEO. You want someone that's got relevant, up-to-date case studies. ideally different industries, you know, touching on different, I guess, elements of SEO, maybe link building stuff they've done for technical SEO on site and things like that.

MICHAEL: Google reviews, Google reviews, big one, clutch reviews, Facebook reviews, whatever. Yeah. Trust pilot any of those sites. Yeah. And I guess the frequency and recency of them. Yes. Would be important. Yeah. Maybe as well, like how engaged are they in this little SEO world? Are they tweeting? Are they posting to LinkedIn? Are they hosting a highly successful SEO podcast like the SEO show? Like us, yeah. You know, are they living and breathing this stuff or are they just selling SEO because they did a course on how to start a digital marketing agency? Yeah. All that stuff. You can see through that pretty, it doesn't take much to look into that and separate the wheat from the chaff, as I say.

ARTHUR: Yeah. That's why we love our case studies, video testimonials, social proof, all that stuff is super important.

MICHAEL: There's few things better than a video testimonial when a client says yes to doing one. Yes. It's so powerful.

ARTHUR: Saying yes to doing one and them actually doing it is, you know.

MICHAEL: Well, yeah. Saying yes is the first step, then getting it done. But once it's ready, they're just amazing. You can't fake them. They're real businesses. You can look it up. You can see the person on camera. So anyone that's good at SEO and has been doing it for a while should really have them.

ARTHUR: Yeah. They require effort, but very valuable.

MICHAEL: Yep. Warning sign doesn't ask for analytics access or provide a detailed onboarding.

ARTHUR: Hmm.

MICHAEL: 100%.

ARTHUR: Well, yeah. Without analytics, what are they measuring? Well, yeah. How do they know? I guess maybe rankings and things like that, but how do they know what, like the level of traffic, conversions, revenue, sales? They don't. They don't. So that's a massive warning sign right there.

MICHAEL: Yep. Now it's not to say that with Ahrefs and SEMrush, you couldn't get a good idea of what needs to be done, but they should at least ask for it. Like if they've got no interest in that. Yeah. It's sort of saying that they're more interested in selling to you, but not so much the actual SEO part and figuring out a plan for you.

ARTHUR: Right. And I guess that kind of ties into the onboarding part of that question. So getting all the access they need to all the different tools like search console, obviously analytics, WordPress or whatever CMS to make changes to the site.

MICHAEL: What else? Well, meetings, kickoff calls, comms during the onboarding, like do they have a structured process that you're going through and you feel like all the no stones being left unturned because someone that's good at it would be doing that. Someone that's just, Very good during the sales and then disappears the minute you've signed. Obviously can be a sign that they're an incompetent SEO. Good salesperson, incompetent SEO is probably the most dangerous thing in the SEO world. Yeah, definitely. From the customer's point of view. Scary. Do you sort of have horrible dreams, wake up in cold sweats at night over that? Never. Good salesperson, bad SEO?

ARTHUR: No, but it makes sense. Yeah. If someone's, I guess, sales game is strong, and then when they sign you on as a client, you don't hear from them, they don't ask for access, they don't onboard you properly, they're not transparent in what they're doing. Oh, good. All those things I've spoken about already.

MICHAEL: Well, the next one here is I'm going to, I'm going to skip one. Doesn't take a holistic approach to SEO. They might be obsessed with content or backlinks or page speed and just, you know, really make out like that. It's a be all end all at the neglect of all the other parts of SEO. Now, you know, we always talk about link building links are very important, but so too is having the content on your site done, your metadata optimized. And if you haven't done that and you're just so obsessed with building links, it's like you've got blinkers on. Yeah. So if an SEO is not looking when, when they're pitching you, if they're not sort of letting you know about the different channels and different pillars, sorry, of SEO and where their work's going to be done in each, that's a warning sign.

ARTHUR: Yeah.

MICHAEL: If they're pushing links because they're a link building agency,

ARTHUR: Yeah, without doing anything on-site, without any technical SEO, internal linking, all that stuff's very important. I guess there are people that kind of maybe specialize in one area. There's a lot of people that are like into content, aren't very technical and vice versa, but you know, they should have a holistic view.

MICHAEL: Yeah. It depends on how they're being engaged, I guess. If they're being engaged to improve the SEO of a website. Yes. And like they're the SEO, like the overall SEO. Yeah. Yeah. But all they focus on is links or page speed improvement. That's a concern.

ARTHUR: Yeah. I guess likewise, if they're engaged just to do content, um, you know, that's all they should focus on a lot of the time.

MICHAEL: Let's move on to the next one here. Failure to stay up to date on SEO best practices, trends or news.

ARTHUR: You like that one? Yeah. Well, I, sorry, I got distracted by the vacuum cleaner that was going off outside. You look like you'd had a, um, like some sort of brain reset. I was in two minds to go out there and tell him to shut up because it was very distracting.

MICHAEL: But, um, imagine if the vacuum cleaner didn't come through on this and people are just wondering.

ARTHUR: I'm pretty sure it would have. That was quite loud.

MICHAEL: Anyway, guys in the comments, let us know if you could hear the vacuum cleaner. Failure to stay up to date on SEO best practices. Oh yeah, absolutely.

ARTHUR: You need to be up to date.

MICHAEL: They should be listening to the SEO show and they can answer anything.

ARTHUR: SEO changes daily, you know, so you need to be up to date. You need to be, you know, following all the right people, going on all the blogs, just checking in to see what's changed, algorithm updates, whatever.

MICHAEL: What do you think about GA4 guys? GA4, what's that? Incompetent SEO. Exactly. What do you think about Google's new SGE? Are you worried about your job or do you think it's going to help SEO in the future? Exactly. What do you mean? What's SGE? What are your thoughts on that? Incompetent.

ARTHUR: What are my thoughts? I was going to say, what are your thoughts on the latest algorithm update? There's a new algorithm update? I don't know.

MICHAEL: That's why all my traffic's gone. Of course, pretty much a no brainer, isn't it? If you work in an industry, you should no doubt be across everything that's going, not even everything, but the big ticket things. be able to chat about most things SEO. Listening to podcasts, reading newsletters, attending conferences, immersing yourself in that world. That's what competent SEOs do.

ARTHUR: Slack channels, different forums, even Reddit.

MICHAEL: Discord, if you're young, if you're one of the young people out there.

ARTHUR: Yeah. You know what? I've never used it. There are Slack channels, Slack communities. Yes. Slack communities. A lot of them just general marketing ones, which are really good. This is true. What else? Twitter occasionally or X. Yeah.

MICHAEL: It's weird, isn't it? Yeah. I can't really get used to that. People will call it Twitter.

ARTHUR: Yeah. It's Twitter. For a very long time. But I mean, just like following all the right people or the SEO gurus and just like having a look at what they're posting. following the publications like Search Engine Journal, where we stole this, or is this Search Engine Land? Yeah, Search Engine Land, all those ones.

MICHAEL: So to sniff out whether they're incompetent, go on a site like Search Engine Land or go on Twitter and search for hashtag SEO, see something that's happened and just ask, what do you think about this?

ARTHUR: Or just ask them, like, who do you follow? Who you're like, you know. Mentors in the SEO world. Not mentors, but what's the word I'm looking for?

MICHAEL: Lords. I think was the term we used before. That's the one. You're Lord Arthur of House Backlinks. Oh God. Of House Backlinks? Yeah. You don't know Game of Thrones? No, I haven't watched Game of Thrones. House Lannister and… Okay. It's pretty nerdy. Very nerdy. I'm not going to keep going with that. Lord Arthur of House Backlinks. I'm Lord Costin of House… I want to be from House Backlinks, actually. That's the best one.

ARTHUR: I don't know, I haven't watched it.

MICHAEL: Actually, I'm Lord Costin from Holistic SEO, House Holistic. Moving right along. Very quickly. Let's move on to the warning sign that they claim they have inside information or they know how the Google algorithm. I wonder if people actually do this.

ARTHUR: Yeah. Yeah. No, I remember a few times we've had clients bring that up that, Oh, my previous agency said they knew the algorithm. They were like, they had an insider at Google that told them when the new updates are coming out or what they would be about and things like that. And they would actually spin that sort of shit.

MICHAEL: Like, It's almost like a joke.

ARTHUR: We had someone try to steal one of our clients, and I don't want to name them. They're still a client of ours, but they came in and pitched their service and software, which was supposed to, remember?

MICHAEL: Yes, I do.

ARTHUR: They were supposed to reverse engineer Google's algorithm. And they full board into it. It was just two blokes with like a- A Gmail and a landing page. And a deck full of grammatical and spelling mistakes that this organization, quite large, full-bored into it. So people do say that sort of stuff.

MICHAEL: People do believe. Our team of data scientists have reverse engineered the algorithm and we'll run you through our proprietary tool and tell you exactly what you need to do if you sign with us. Insane. Yeah, it is insane. So no one has inside information. Google doesn't even know how Google works. No, no. Really everything we preach on this show is what influences the algorithm. Sometimes they change them and then you need to adapt.

ARTHUR: Yeah, that's it. Yeah. I like that one. That's a good point.

MICHAEL: That's a great point. We got one more. I feel we've sort of touched on this one, but poor comms, you know, not giving regular, excuse me, updates and detailed reporting. Yep. Touched on it at the start, but that's very important.

ARTHUR: Yeah. Communication is very important. Just, you know, building a relationship with the client is important, keeping them up to date, being transparent. You build that trust and, Once you build that trust, you know, sometimes you might not have the best month, but because they trust you, because you've built that relationship, it's not the be all end all.

MICHAEL: And because at the start you put together a customized plan that was clear and everyone agreed on the plan and expectations were set. Exactly. It's okay that things are maybe slow one month or not moving as quickly as you'd hoped because it's all been explained.

ARTHUR: Yeah. And if they're not, communicate and explain, you know, this is what we've seen happen. You know, this is what we're doing to try and rectify it. And that's it. Give them confidence that, you know, or build that, what do you call it? I guess, yeah, confidence.

MICHAEL: What I read an analogy that you're like relationship where the client is like a bank, you need to make deposits in that bank of trust to build trust. So your trust with the client and it's, you're not withdrawing from the bank, you're making deposits over time. And if you build up enough deposits in your bank, you can afford to have one or two withdrawals without it all going bankrupt.

ARTHUR: That's a really good analogy. Thank you. Thank you very much. You are the king of analogies. Well, I totally stole that from somewhere, but yeah. But it does make sense. And we've had situations where, you know, outside of your control, you might not have the best month for a client. If you don't have that relationship, there's no comms, you know, they tend to blow up and leave. They're unhappy, team's unhappy, but if you build up that trust, build up that communication, if there's issues, they trust you. You give them your feedback on certain things and they'll trust in the plan.

MICHAEL: So, yep. So it's in the competent SEO's best interest to communicate. Yes. Incompetent ones hide away.

ARTHUR: Yeah, you know what, maybe not because we always used to talk about how SEOs can be one or two people. Like they can be the geeky nerds behind the keyboard that don't know how to talk to people. They're not bad SEOs, they're just not very, I guess, good at communicating or being client facing. But then you also have the ones that are very good at being client facing and explaining things to clients that might not be as technical as the ones behind the keyboard. I guess certain people have different strengths and weaknesses, but you know, I guess someone should be able to, I guess, communicate via Slack or email. Bare minimum.

MICHAEL: Not hiding from, I would say hiding from comments is a sign that they're incompetent.

ARTHUR: I guess relationship building as well as a bit of a skill. You know what I mean? Like you have to be a certain type of person and be personable and be able to build relationships.

MICHAEL: But if you're engaging a service, an agency, then that should be part of it. If you're engaging a freelancer, then it depends on the freelancer and why you've engaged them and what you've engaged them for. The last one in this article, which I'm not totally in agreeance with, it says treating you as a vendor, not a partner. I would say This depends on how much they're charging and what your goals are as a business. If you really want bargain basement pricing, then you're going to get by sort of necessity, the more productized vendor based relationship where they just knock out deliverables. keep you updated, but they're not your partner. They're not someone that you, your trusted advisor that you can come to for strategic ad hoc consultancy, because that stuff is expensive. Whereas if you're investing a lot, then yes, they are your partner. That's it. The context matters.

ARTHUR: Yeah. You can't expect to be paying $400 a month and then have someone, you know, your beck and call 24 seven. No. So.

MICHAEL: If you're paying $400 a month for SEO, you should stop immediately.

ARTHUR: Well, that's a warning sign right there in itself. But you know, if someone's paying you five figures a month, then absolutely, you know, you treat them as a partner.

MICHAEL: Yes, I agree. Well, that's pretty much all the ones that we've stolen from this article. We stole them because we agree with them, largely.

ARTHUR: Well, it's just an interesting article. A lot of people wouldn't know the warning signs of an incompetent SEO.

MICHAEL: So what would you say to someone that's looking to engage an SEO at the moment?

ARTHUR: Yes.

MICHAEL: What's the action plan to avoid an incompetent one?

ARTHUR: Well, I guess finding out, I guess when you do choose to work with them, getting them to give you like a plan as to what they're doing, ask questions, always ask questions and make sure there is that transparency. I guess that was probably to me the most important point. Make sure they're communicating, communication and transparency. Communicate what they're doing, how they're going to improve your results and being transparent about everything that they do.

MICHAEL: Yep. I would add to that, suss them out big time. Social proof reviews. Yes.

ARTHUR: Just do they seem legit? Yeah. Go on LinkedIn, have a look at their experience. You know, if they've been doing this for like a decade at different agencies and you can be pretty confident that they have some idea of SEO. But if it's just someone that's, you know, been around for eight months who has done like two courses and now is trying to be an SEO guru, then chances are they're not gonna be very competent.

MICHAEL: That is a warning sign right there. All right, well, let's wrap this one up. We'll be back next week with another episode of the SEO show.

ARTHUR: We'll potentially- Famous last words. We might be back next week. See you in three months, everyone.

MICHAEL: I know we'll be back because we're about to record another one. Yeah. So after that, who knows what will happen. But along that way, that whole time, until now, until then, until next week. And then maybe I've forgotten what our outro is. It's been that long. Happy SEOing. Oh, happy SEOing. See ya. Bye bye.

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