Scoreboard Media Group, Internet Audience Development

“If you can rank a site in lucrative markets, why would you do it for clients instead of for yourself?”

That’s the first thing you, the prospective client, should ask each of the SEO consultants you are considering.  In my opinion, there are only three honest answers to that question:

1.  “I choose interesting projects that give me looks at complex problems I wouldn’t normally see in the course of building out my own sites.” 

This is my approach to whatever portion of my resource mix gets allocated to consulting engagements.  I still take on about ten private clients a year and each of them are trying to solve a very complex problem.  This keeps me at the top of my game, I feel like I’m earning my check, and it definitely gives me a competitive edge. 

2.  “I understand that I don’t know everything and, while I can help your business succeed in quality search engine traffic, your business is successful in a facet of this business I feel I could learn from you on.” 

A few of my clients are hardcore paid search arbitrage and affiliate guys who are trying to mitigate some risk by acquiring defensible organic search traffic.  One other client is a big domainer.  I’ve learned some amazing things from these guys that have helped hone my marketing chops while imparting my expertise to them.

3.  “I think easy cash today is better than more cash a year from now.” 

This is an answer I’d hope to hear from a younger consultant than an A-lister.  For many of us, we only consulted as long as we had to in order to build up our bankroll.  I’m constantly amazed at how many of these “SEO Firms” with the big followings generate little to no income from their own projects.  If there is a stronger signal of quality for a lack of confidence in their own ability, I can’t think of it.

That said, I charge a lot and I have an addiction to cars, so I may divert some more energy to consulting before a car purchase.  It’s really, really hard to ween yourself from the Consulting Crack Pipe, but with that said, if your consultant does nothing but consult/teach, that’d be a huge red flag to me.  If anyone with more than 3 years of experience is allocating more than 50% of their time to consulting, I’m going on record as doubting their skills.

So, after just throwing 75% of the industry under the bus, here are some people I would recommend because I know they can teach and I know they could eat well if they stopped consulting:

In no particular order and assuming you called me with your really interesting project first:

1.  Aaron Wall
2.  Todd Malicoat
3.  Greg Boser
4.  John Andrews
5.  Rae Hoffman
6.  Andy Hagans
7.  Michael Gray
8.  Neil Patel
9.  Cameron Olthuis

Hey, Matt.  Is it me or do these results for [ringtones] look a little too, umm, educational? 

 This bothers me.  Greatly.

Shoemoney recently held a poll asking, “Who is the Godfather of Search?”  Of course, Danny Sullivan won  by a country mile.  Danny had more votes than everyone else combined and that ain’t too shabby when two of the other options were the founders of a little search engine named Google.  It is my personal opinion that each of us practicing search marketers should wake up, shower, caffeinate, and then Paypal $10 of gratitude to Danny Sullivan .  Each and every day.  He’s that valuable to our community.  But, with all due respect, Danny wouldn’t be my first choice of hires to actually rank something.

This leads to the question…”Who is the SEO Logo?”.  For those of you who don’t know what I’m referring to, look at the NBA Logo.  That is actually the likeness of one Jerry West…Mr. Clutch.  There are very few who played, taught, and managed in professional sports as well as Jerry West.  Hell, he won the NBA Finals MVP while he was on the losing team.  There is one person like that in the SEO world and he’d be the first person I tried to hire if I wanted to build an SEO franchise.  Our “logo” is Greg Boser.

Look, I think we all like to think we are “Awesomest (it’s a word in SoCal beach communities). SEO.  Evah.”  and can get the job done.  Most of us do and we can hold our own in the competitive stuff.  But if God appeared to me and said, “Rank for [viagra] in 30 days or I will kill your dog”, I call Greg and throw a bunch of money at him rather than getting behind the steering wheel myself.  Dude has been getting it done for a long, long time and we could all learn a few operational things or eighty from him. 

I think it also merits question why my God is so spiteful.

A very, very close runner up as “The Logo”, in my mind, is one David Naylor.  Anyways, if somebody can Photoshop a picture of Greg’s dome or a gorilla into the blue/white/red NBA style logo, you’d probably get some good links.

Jason Calacanis said SEO’s were Snake Oil Salesmen.  I don’t feel like getting into the whole “Content is King” debate again.  You have 2 options:  1) Good content without promotion or 2)  Good content with promotion.  #2 wins every single time.  As long as there is a profit motive for good content, there is a profit motive for promoting it.  SEO is one tool.  SMO is another.  But you need to be proactive.

So, I’m more of a picture guy and I get the hunch that Jason might be, too.  Just to be helpful, I made a visual representation of the Snake Oil Salesmen Community. 

Get the point?  Keep on hating.