In his post “Why Bother with an SEO Company?“, Brent Yorzinski makes the point that “People hire SEO companies for the same reasons they hire attorneys”. The more I think about it, the more think he might be on to something. There are definitely several parallels that can be drawn against the services provided by SEOs and lawyers.

So without further ado, here’s my top 10 reasons SEOs are like lawyers.

1. You don’t get one until you realise how screwed you are without one.
2. You judge them based on their success rate with previous clients.
3. You pay the best regardless of if you win or lose. The “No Win, No Fee” type tend to be bottom feeders.
4. If the service is any good, the provider will make it look easy. It wasn’t.
5. It’s not always true that “the more you pay, the better you’ll get”. Many of the best known and highest charging agencies are also the busiest, and you are unlikely to get the same attention as you might from a smaller vendor.
6. Equally, if you insist on going for the cheapest you can find, you shouldn’t be surprised if you find yourself locked up (or in Google’s case, locked out)
7. Imagine that your site is the case your lawyer (your SEO) has to present to the judge (Google). Do you have a good case? Do you have a trustworthy history? Plenty of good references? What’s to keep the judge from sending you down?
8. Choose carefully, because whatever happens, it’s your nuts on the line. If you choose a crappy service because you didn’t do your homework, don’t expect them to come to the rescue once the judgement is passed, they’ll as likely bail out with your cash and leave you in the clink. A good service will see you through and do everything in it’s power to get you out of there.
9. No matter what we say or do, at the end of the day, the judge has the final say. We might not agree with the judge’s decisions, we might even think he’s being a hypocritical idiot from time to time, but what he decides is what matters, and we’ve all just got to deal with it. You might have a chance at a lengthy appeals process once the judgement has been passed, but don’t expect anything to happen quickly (unless you happen to be BMW or bigmouthmedia).
10. As Brent puts it himself “People hire SEO companies often for the same reasons they hire attorneys. They need a trusted advisor who is engrossed in the industry on a daily basis. If something changes on the search engine landscape they want to know about it. Therefore I conclude the many times a firm is hired partly for an increased level of comfort and partially for the added expertise that can be derived from a company or person experienced in search engine optimization.”