Lyons Leadership

When you hire a big agency to run your online campaign, you are dishing out for a specific service, one that was only established in the last 10 years. There can be occasional problems with this approach.

Jargon is Our Mortal Enemy

What does that imply for the transparency of these agencies? Unfortunately, that too many pseudo-companies are messing around, trying to make some quick cash. And many of them have hit on a sure-fire way of pulling it in: by capitalizing on the strangeness that you find in search engines as a way to rake in a crazy amount of cash.

No one can confidently say exactly why specific sites make it to the top of Google. We have a pretty good amount of guesses, and Google explains its systems with a certain degree of openness. Trying things out and seeing how they work shows a lot. But fully appreciating all of the Google search algorithm is simply not possible: it’s endlessly developing, and engineers at Google are working every second to confirm it can’t be messed around with or gamed with by someone not playing by the rules.

No One Can Understand Google Perfectly

That is key. Untrustworthy SEO companies will exaggerate their arbitrary knowledge of how search engines work in order to mislead you with jargon. Buyer beware.

One of the main reasons a good and trustworthy company is the most important thing is because many SEO companies will also manage your PPC campaigns. Unlike the Google’s arbitrary and slightly secret methods, these publicity attempts could not be more open.

Why the Web is More Transparent Than Print or TV

You don’t have to deal with Nielsen ratings or circulation estimates like with print and television advertising: you can know exactly how, when, why, and even where—down to the most specific city—your ads are hitting.

So, any big SEO outfit who takes a nice cheque from you and dumps your paid search ad campaigns in with the more difficult (but still viable) work of optimizing your pages, and doesn’t pull back the sheet to reveal where that money is going, is simply not being honest enough. Of course SEO companies will make money—they’re providing a difficult job, and they’re a proper company that needs to make money too.

Every Good SEO Must Herald Openness

But not providing you with full Google Analytics and a proper notion of how much is getting dropped on paid search is just a recipe for fraud.

The transparency that can be accessed online should be warmly welcomed and pushed by any honest organization, but just as in the ‘offline’ realm, there are untrustworthy types and there are transparent, open ones. Ensure you choose one that puts to use your ad money honestly.

Old-School Comparisons Can Make Things Clear

Sometimes the easiest method to get a complete idea of just how this online milieu works is to compare it to previous publicity markets. Think about the following: you are paying an ad agency to advertise your little shop in a new market, and you don’t have the wherewithal to follow your campaign closely. So you rely on the ad men for all your feedback. You don’t need to have obtained a wall full of business degrees to use a little common sense.

Clear up to this point? Now imagine this ad agency is not very reputable. They’re taking a good chunk of your money and using it to pay their inflated salaries. Instead of being honest about what they’re making off you, they just care about earning.

Stuck in the Classifieds

So they insist on the fact that your money is being used for big commercials in the Sunday paper (the equivalent of PPC or running a big banner push), but all you’re ending up with is a lousy classified ad, the equivalent of an entirely unseen little page somewhere.

Old school companies could hide this behind billed hours for other things, but Google’s AdWords systems are so easy-to-use and open that it’s generally useless to try and hide away what you’re trying to accomplish—that is, unless you’re a dishonest SEO company. Keep with openness, choose a Google-certified SEO agency, and relax, all the better if they offer SEO Chat, you can guage them first.