Time for a Corporate Name Change

While at my day job last week, this SEO company called me. They wanted to set up a phone appointment so that they could spend some time pointing out the reasons why our website was not achieving first page search engine positioning. Where they got that idea I couldn't say, because it is well-ranked for some keywords. Anyway, I agreed and we set up the appointment for 10 AM Tuesday.

Prior to the scheduled call, I did a little research on this company - the results of which were unsavory:

• In 2004 they were tossed out of the Better Business Bureau.



• In 2004 the Attorney General of the State of Washington slapped this company with fines after receiving over 100 complaints of services not delivered.



• There is a splattering of un-rebutted complaints over at RipOff Reports - one as recent as earlier this month.

I probably would have been better off to just cancel this tele-appointment, but I didn't. The sales rep called at the appointed time and did his spiel. I was amazed at the garbage-type information that came from this person. I won't go into all the details except to say that he went on endlessly about the importance of Meta-tags to our search engine rankings (is it 1997 again?) and questionable tactics such as creating 30 mirror sites for our one ecommerce site. Little was mentioned about current standard SEO tactics such as title tag tweaking, on-page content optimization, or linking strategies.

I never even got around to confronting him about the customer service issues mentioned above; I dismissed him and said my good-byes long before that. But this really raises two issues for any web-based entrepreneur.

1st is the importance of understanding SEO at least at a macro level. I'm not a professional SEO by the way, but I have spent a lot of time studying what it takes to attain good search engine rankings in an ethical way. At some point, I'll not have time to do my own SEO and at some point I'll leave my day job (where I do SEO work for my employer). At least when it comes time to outsource the service, I'll be well-equipped to weed out the blockheads from the real SEOs.

2nd is the importance of never forgetting that your customer is your business. For businesses on the web, customers are more abstract than Brick & Mortar type businesses. This is no reason to treat them any differently. This company seems to have forgotten that. It's almost as though their damage-control department is permanently out to lunch.

I know from experience that it is REALLY easy to stay in the good graces of the Better Business Bureau and it's a simple matter to keep complaints from going to the state attorney general. Problems will occur and some customers may be unhappy. But basic customer relationship ethics dictate that you deal with unhappy customers in the most constructive way possible and internally escalate any serious problems to a level where a solution can be reached.

If I were running the company above, the first thing I would do is restructure the corporation -- starting with a name change. Once there is a stack of problems on record as this company has, trust (and therefore business) will be very hard for them to come by.

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