• iMedia Connection, Monday, August 25, 2008 12:45 PM

Brandt Dainow serves up a scathing review of seven ways that search firms can under-serve or otherwise rip off their clients. He's not an "SEO sucks" kind of guy, as this article comes on the heels of one in which he extols the virtues of SEO. But Dainow explains that he received a "surprising" number of responses to the first article from readers who'd been duped by unscrupulous search firms.

"People complained about SEO suppliers doing things that I thought we had long ago eliminated," he says. "I thought the marketing community had smartened up and driven the SEO carpetbaggers out of town. I guess I was wrong."

Dainow calls search practitioners to task for using jargon and even creating words to describe the work they perform. For example, he found a company that described both "crawl maps" and sitemaps in their marketing literature. "Everybody knows how to create a site map, but only this company knows how to create a crawl map," Dainow says. "In fact, since there is no such thing, only this company even knows what it is (and it's not telling)."

He also says that hiding behind the guise of "IP rights" when clients ask for an explanation of how proprietary technology works is inexcusable. Dainow even argues that focusing on link-building (in terms of quantity as opposed to quality) can actually under-serve clients, as well as giving Page Rank too much attention.

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