Does Indian SEO firms lack credibility?

Have you noticed that Indian SEO’s are looked at with doubt by the rest of the world? A fact it is.

Just to get an idea how serious this issue is, first check out Mr.Seo’s(Joe Balestrino) podcast where he talks about SEO’s in India, and the “problems” he thinks you can run into hiring one.

Joe had a client who had initially outsourced his SEO work to a SEO firm in India and he ran into problems(which is why he approached Mr.SEO). The client complained that the SEO firm in India did not submit projects on time, and did not really communicate anything to him on what is being done. Joe adds on later that outsourcing SEO work to India may not be a good idea.

Well, if you ask me, I can’t agree completely with Joe because he’s talking from a single client’s experience. I think this is a one-off case, and Joe should not completely label Indian SEO firms(outsourcing) as non-credible.

The problems he found with the Indian SEO firm were..

They ere not on time with projects
Were incredibly cheap (So he suspected it was a fraud company)
Did not communicate with the client
Failed in on-site optimization, and rather emphasized more on link-building

Joe’s client was unfortunate, to having selected a poor SEO firm in India. This is not a problem faced due to outsourcing SEO work to India or any other company.
The real problem lies in un educated clients.
Clients sometimes may not know anything about SEO except the fact that they need their site on the top of SERPs. Many a times, they do not agree to the time  we suggest we require and wants to hurry things.

As you may be aware, SEO is not a miracle doer, it takes time, lots of time. In fact it’s an on-going project may a times rather than a “Start, okay, done” project. Search Engine rankings does not stand forever, they change as algorithms change. Unfortunately many clients are not aware of such things and blindly need SEO firms to..

- Get their site on the top asap.
- Make it stay there forever.
- Cannot stretch on time and
- Need guaranteed results.

I think with such unfair demands from an ignorant client, black hat SEO’s can grow easily. And which is what might have happened in this case.

As Joe’s observation goes, the client had copied articles from Amazon and other sites (which explains his motives), so there were lot of supplementary results in the site, which the Indian firm did not find out. And they rather focused only on backlinks. Joe further says that the Indian SEO firm did not let the client know as to where the backlinks came from. Which is a fair comment. SEO’s should let the clients know where the backlinks are from and firstly, why they need backlinks.

When ignorant clients are a reality (like this case), it could also be a fact that, Indian SEO’s don’t communicate well with the clients, making things tough.

But I don’t think it’s a healthy practice to label “outsourcing SEO work” as dangerous just because they are cheaper. Rather, efforts should be made to educate clients on why they need SEO, what can be done to help them and what cannot be.

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