SEO as a business is plagued with scammers (they almost always cold call by phone or email) and people who think they can do SEO cheap and cheerful. They invariably are using software that essentially spams the internet or have a virtual team in another country that produces non native English speaker type content.
It's crap.
It's uncomfortable to have this ilk creating one image/experience of what I consider a valuable, high ROI business. Sometimes I've encountered business owners that are now convinced that SEO is just a big scam. That's unfortunate. We work hard at SEO and we pride ourselves in the results we get for our clients.
That can make it tough to hear someone dismiss our work out of hand without giving you a chance. I'm getting thick skinned and all zen about it.
The damage it does to small business owners is more what bothers me. Local SEO can provide the highest return on investment of any marketing. Further, this ROI is going to grow drastically over the next few years as the internet becomes even more useful, more used and more sophisticated.
Every business niche has fierce competition. That's the "game" of a free market economy. I'll bet your business has some low ball, poor quality, "promise much and under deliver" competition that you lose business to. Invariably that customer ends up coming back to you. Then you have to clean up the mess or explain to the customer who went with the low price, why that low price meant the product or service they got – sucked. And why yours won't. You almost always, get what you paid for!
Matt McGee has written a short post about a fallacious SEO offer he got over at Small Business SEM. Worth a giggle.
