A series of what I wish were odd events took place in my little cirlce of SEO friends recently. I say “wish” because unfortunately, these things happen a lot around here. You see, a nameless friend of mine took a job somewhere as their in-house SEO. At the same time, her new employer was also in the midst of a contract with an outside “SEO firm.” This firm was horrible to say the least. Obviously, it didn’t take long to see several confrontations.

Side note: Because I have intimate knowledge of all three parties involved, I have to be a little vague. I know someone who works for the piss-poor SEO firm, and I know a few details about the things they were suggesting to the new company my friend works for. As much as I want to “out” them, I think it in better taste not to.

OK, back to my post. Everything ended well. My friend shined in her knowledge and it turns out she is one of the lucky SEOs in Jacksonville to work for a competent company. They backed her up pretty well. The other Jacksonville “SEO firm” was brought to light. But, this whole thing made me think of the Search Engine Optimization landscape in Jacksonville, FL. It’s pretty bad around here. So, why not use my noggin to get a closer look at SEO vendors in Jacksonville?

Instead of pointing to the bad ones first, I would like to show you what seem to be good ones. Go to Google. Type in “search engine optimization jacksonville.” Because I don’t have an inside look at most of these companies, I’m just going to share my first-glance thoughts. I could be entirely wrong, but I’ll discuss some of the things they say on their site that make me feel they have a grasp on this whole SEO thingy.

You can tell a lot about a SEO vendor by the statements they make on their own site. Little signs can give you a hint as to the quality of their SEO services. Often times, the real problem with SEO services is the way in which they are sold, and the expectations set by the company.

The Good
stationfour and Vision Networks

Why am I so happy with these 2 sites? Let’s take a look at some of the statements on their site.

Over at Vision Networks’ SEO page, they make a few statements that make me think they are providing a quality service, at the very least up front. Taken directly from various places on that page:

The first thing you will have to commit to is hard work. Like so many other things in life, achieving high search engine rankings takes a conserved effort. There is no free lunch in search engine optimization.

In short, SEO requires constant attention to both your site and the industry, so be prepared to give some quality time to achieving good rankings, it doesn’t come easy.

They even have a nice caution:

Caution: We recommend that you disregard the advertisements from services and software providers that guarantee great rankings by submitting your site to hundreds of search engines. Automatic submission software does nothing but resubmit your site over and over to the same search engines.

and my favorite statement on the page

Create a “Valuable” Web Site

This is what a quality SEO service looks like from the outside. Again, I could be wrong and I have no way of knowing how they actually optimize and promote their sites, but if it’s reflected on this page, they get the SEO Factor seal of Search Engine Optimization in Jacksonvile Approval.

Let’s move on to stationfour, and take a look at some of the statements they make.

In a FAQ style format:

Do I really need to be submitted to a million search engines?
As you can see from the above questions the answer is no. Very early in the industry companies tried to use how many engines they submitted you to as a selling point even though it was by a large irrelevant. Today, search engines find you with their spiders. For new sites it can make sense to give the search engine a starting point but hopefully through the development of quality incoming links the search engines will have already found you.

And my personal favorite:

How do I gauge the success of seo efforts?
Ultimately you should gauge the success of failure of an SEO effort by your bottom line; did you make more money. Of course because of market fluctuations this might not always give you clear answers in the short run. The next best indicator is in your web metrics. We keep an eye on rankings in the search engines, but do caution clients that the rankings are not the goal. The goal is the increased business that comes from higher rankings.

These 2 sites are doing a decent job at setting the right expectations, and I feel likely to offer quality services.

Not Bad
I want to mention 2 sites that I don’t think are “bad” really, but not quite as good as the previous 2. Interchanges and an un-named site. I wanted to point on them because later I’m going to tell you that the rest of the results (without naming them) simply shouldn’t even be considered. So, I don’t want these 2 to fall into that category.

First, Interchanges. Again, there is nothing really wrong with this site’s page, but I feel it lacks a bit of timely information. All the statements they make are “true” but it seems to be missing a second part to almost everything said. There are a ton of great definitions on there that can easily be understood, but they don’t tell you anything about the specifics of the service they are providing. I feel this is more of a personal gripe than a sign of a poor SEO service.

I won’t name this one because I’m just not completely sure, so I’m going to point out some naughty things. The next one sorta just spams their main SEO page with the term “Search Engine Positioning and optimization.” They really don’t have any information on there about their services specifically, but they do try to tell you that there are no guarantees and that a proper SEO campaign takes time.

In the end, I can’t really fault a company for using a lot of marketing speak, but I do wish they would disclose a bit more about their methods just so we can tell if they are of a quality Jacksonville SEO company or not. They also link to some external sites in almost paid-for-link fashion (this is why I don’t want to name them specifically). I just don’t see the reason for doing so on a company site. Though, these could just be other properties they own, so I won’t pass judgement just yet.

The Bad
As I stated, I won’t name the sites; instead I’ll just make it so incredibly obvious who is targeted that I may as well have.

I think one of them is making things up as they go along. The following is taken from their site, and other than marketing speak (though there is nothing wrong with that) there is little more than this list:

• Keyword selection by language linguistics research
• Themed keyword saturation throughout the site
• Site design elements and HTML attributes
• Site navigation elements and site architecture
• HTML coding (only by hand)
• Link popularity integration
• Submission order and sequence
• Search engine partnering
• Web analytics and consumer business profiling

These statements just make me feel like they don’t actually have someone on staff with any real experience. I’m not too sure what “submission order and sequence” and “search engine partnering” even means. It all sounds fake, and there is nothing more on here discussing what it is they will do for a site.

And, the best for last. This next one really gets to me. I poked around this site, and some of their other sites (they are attempting to spam their way to more exposure, but in a very old-school way. I’m not sure they know what duplicate content means).

Seriously, word for word, this is a header of one of their pages:

We specialize in search engine optimization, Jacksonville, search engine ranking, search engine positioning, website promotion, web site promotion, optimization, Internet marketing, search engine submission, search engine, boost site ranking, increase search engine position, raise search engine ranking, better search engine position

Stuff much?

That page alone goes one with a ton of nonsense. But, if you look at another page about their SEO services (I have no idea why these separate pages even exist), you will see the following header, then sub header directly beneath it:

Florida Search Engine Optimization and Marketing

Search Engine Optimization and Positioning Strategic Internet Marketing for Indianapolis and Nationwide

then they duplicate much of the first page I mentioned. Maybe third times a charm?

There is yet a third page that really throws it off. Insted of pointing out to you to the part of their service where they openly admit that they buy links, then directly mention that they sell links on their clients’ websites (see how I can do that? Awesome writing by Josh Garner today), I’ll show you a bullet list they include:

• Search Engine Promotion
• Website Optimization
• Search Engine Positioning
• Website Promotion
• Web Development
• Website Design
• Internet Promotion
• Promote Website
• Search Engine Optimization
• Link Popularity & Exchange
• Website Development
• Site Analysis & Consultation
• Promoting your Website
• Search Engine Placement

Wait, what if I want “Search Engine Promotion,” but not “Website Optimizatin?” And I would like the “Search Engine Positioning,” and the “Search Engine Optimization,” but I’m not a fan of the “Internet Promotion” or “Search Engine Placement.” can I get that service?

I know this was a long post, but a few of us thought it needed to be said. So, if you are still here, I hope you get an idea of the Search Engine Optimization landscape here in Jacksonville. There are a few good places out here, but not even close to the companies just in it to make a buck.