LOL people get angry when you bring to light their SEO scams...
Again, no disrespect to the REAL SEOers out there, you deserve respect. To the scam artists, you should all be arrested for Fraud.
I think part of your problem is that you're putting all of the blame on the vendors instead a balance of the business owner and the crappy SEO firm.
Many of these package deals are just selling links or using a one-size fits all strategy (which doesn't work). Below are some examples:
Situation 1: The business owners often want package deals because there's a list of line items they can follow, the number of links is quantifiable and it gives them a sense of trust and tangibility. The problem is package deals don't work in the long run. They might see success the first time around and keep repeat ordering the same package. This quickly leads them down the path to a penalty, they then blame the SEO firm. You can't simply take the same template and repeat it, that in of itself is a footprint and unnatural. SEO should never be done the same way each month. You need constant change to mimic natural link growth.
Situation 2: The business owner likes to pretend they know SEO (cause they did some "research" for 5 minutes on a forum) and they just buy a few package deals and put them together. The issue with this is either the package does not work or the business owner has no idea what an effective strategy is and therefore they jump at anything with a low price tag. The problem is unless you can expertly evaluate the packages strategies for cross compatibility it can quickly lead to penalty. Not all strategies or packages work well together, in fact, most don't.
Situation 3: They try doing SEO themselves by buying a bunch of packages and then F*** their site over. They then right it off as the vendors fault when the reality is THEY just did not know what they were doing.
Situation 4: The business owners tend to be over obsessed with link reports instead of results. They might even take the link report and then try to build off it on their own, which typically leads to disaster.
The fact is, many business owners are used to being in control and they try to control their SEO and instead F*** it up and then blame the SEO firm as a scapegoat for their incompetence. I know exactly what you're talking about in terms of their are a plethora of scam SEO companies out there or wannabe SEOs who don't actually know what they are doing.
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I do agree that 9/10 SEOs do NOT know what they are doing. I can't tell you how many people I talk to per week that are looking to outsource their SEO because they took on SEO clients without even knowing how to do SEO. I am always shocked at how these guys are selling businesses on SEO when they hardly have a clue about SEO themselves. I'm not talking about our resellers, but straight up supposed "SEO Firms".
On a weekly basis I get questions from "freelance seo experts" who don't even know what to charge and they quite literally make prices up. Most of the time I just shake my head when they talk about their strategy.
On average 50% of our firms clients have been burned by an average of 3 firms before they found us.
