Update: Long term readers of this blog might feel a little deja vu while reading this article, as it was originally posted back in February. I’ve reposted it because more and more of you have started visiting recently, and I wanted to put it in front of some more eyeballs in the hope of gathering more opinions on the subject. The article has also been revised a little to include some thoughts I’ve had on the subject since the original posting. For my older readers, apologies for the re-hash. For my newer readers, please do feel free to leave a comment and let me know what you think of the issue!

ORIGINALLY POSTED 5TH FEB 2008

Late last week I was involved in an unfortunate turn of events that eventually led to the closing of the North South Media Top SEO’s Contest. A friend of mine over at WebWorkShop.net asked for opinions regarding the contest after coming across it for the first time, and the discussion that followed, sadly, went a little sour.

Beginning with the suggestion that a company who has high rankings for industry keyterms will not necessarily provide a good service, the conversation ultimately lead to the suggestion that these high rankings actually imply that a company with the time to spare to achieve them must actually provide a worse service than other “top seos” who do not, as they are spending their time working at that rather than on their clients’ sites.

Now, I understand and agree with the position that high rankings do not necessarily equate to a better quality service - I know this from experience. This does call into question the validity of whether the poll really does represent the “top seo companies”, but then who decides the definition of “top”? Achieving rankings for industry terms is a competitive task, and one that requires real SEO skills. At very least, you’re saying to potential clients “if we can do it for ourselves, we can do it for you”, and this is often enough to secure a contract. As I pointed out in the thread, just look at the success of Steve Leach’s bigmouthmedia - until recently they were number 1 consistently for the term “search engine optimisation”. I know for a fact that this point was used to help them win a lot of pitches, and along with some shrewd financial manoeuvering, including an aggressive reverse takeover of my former employers Global Media, become the largest independent search marketing provider around. Just Search also make a point of mentioning their high rankings for SEO-related terms and have recently been bought out for seven figures by “search giant” Getupdated (not that I’d heard of them before the buy).

I’m not saying I’d personally model a business after either of these examples, having been on the shopfloor in both. In my opinion, their success stems from flashy branding and sometimes aggressive sales allowing them to land high profile clients such as Hilton (as optimised by bigmouth) and Dejoria (as optimised by Just Search), perhaps at the expense of their smaller clients. I believe the branding and sales patter doesn’t always match the actual experience of the people who are to be working on the campaign, and while there is certainly a core of very knowledgable folk in both organisations, much of the work is carried out by relative young ‘uns, rather like I was back in my earlier Global Media days (and some might argue still am - we’re all still learning after all). There is certainly a big difference in the way they integrate their work into their sites, however. Check the examples to see what I mean. If you can’t tell the difference, back to SEO school for you!

All that said, one thing they have both got right is their rankings.

Update: In response to this post, Scott over at Fused Nation has written regarding his experience at bigmouthmedia, which lead to some very interesting comments - worth checking out.

I do understand that there are many, many top quality SEOs out there that are not working to achieve these rankings, and this does not reflect on the quality of their work one jot. However, to assume and advise that ranking for these terms suggests a poorer quality service is just sour grapes. Lets face it, with the available time and resources, ALL of us in the industry would like our SEO related sites to rank for “search engine optimisation”, “SEO”, or even “search engine optimization” (if you choose - sorry, chooze - to spell it wrong).

So live and let live, guys, however you decide to sell your services.

And Paul, thanks for the link love man, it makes me feel all warm and fuzzy.