The Snake Oil Maths of selling SEO

Disclaimer: All numbers used in this post are for illustrative purposes only.

There's a great post causing controversy in the online world today at http://powazek.com/posts/2090. To paraphrase Derek Powazek - and I do urge you to read the original - Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is 'poisoning the web'. The people who sell it help no-one but themselves. The web needs content, not spurious optimisation.

This set me off thinking on a pet bugbear of mine. I've been around the small business scene for some 17 years and I've probably listened to SEO pitches from 30 companies. (I should declare an interest - until mid 2008 I was a partner in a small marketing agency who created a number of websites.)

The pitch - and I'll be quite honest, I can't remember a single one that didn't use this line, or a variant - goes like:

We represent Fred's Foil Company. And if you enter European Foil Manufacturers into Google, you'll see Fred's Foil Company on the first page. Out of 3,300,027 results, Fred's Foil Company is in the top 5. If we can do that for Fred's Foil Company, what could we do for you?

A stunned audience rocks back on its collective haunches and swarms the speaker directly afterwards. And I pop another blood vessel.

Here's why. The pitch is always the same because of the very clever implied promises it contains.

1) Google will read your mind.

The suggestion implicit in the pitch above is that anyone looking for a foil manufacturer in Europe will use exactly the search term that the site happens to be in top position for.

In fact, it's great if you do enter 'European Foil Manufacturers' into Google.

It's probably less effective if you enter 'Aluminium Foil Suppliers' or similar. But we all make the same mental jump - that Google will somehow read our minds, know that we're looking for 'Aluminium Foil Suppliers' even though we actually entered 'European Foil Manufacturers'.

You can avoid making this assumption by simply asking the question: "What happens if I enter a slightly different term - say 'English Foil Manufacturers' or 'Foil Makers Bristol'?" My bet is that the site turns out to be not so optimised for many other terms bar the one(s) pitched by the consultant.

2) Out of millions of suppliers, the SEO has succeeded in placing their client near the top of the list.

This is the biggie. It's a very simple mental con that anyone who knows anything about how search engines work - like say, an SEO consultant - knows that they're pulling as the words leave their mouth.

It's the bit that goes "Out of 3,300,027 results, Fred's Foil Company is in the top 5."

Like it or not, when you hear that, your brain is saying "Good Grief! There are 3,300,027 potential answers to that query and Fred's made the Top 5! That's amazing!" And there's a further mental implication made. "Good grief - there are 3,300,027 OTHER COMPANIES MAKING FOIL IN EUROPE and Fred's in the Top 5!!"

When you consider it, that's obviously not possible. But that's the line you've been fed. Out of 3,300,027 potential suppliers of Foil in Europe, Fred makes the Top 5 list in Google.

So how does Google get 3,300,027 answers to the query? It's simple - but again, your brain's not working this way. Google doesn't actually say "Here's 3,300,027 answers to the search query for European Foil Manufacturers." What Google does is say:

I have 2,000,000 results with the word 'European' in them.
I have 500,000 results with the word 'Foil' in them.
I have 500,000 results with the word 'Manufacturers' in them
I have 100,000 results with the words 'European' and 'Foil' in them.
I have 100,000 results with the words 'European' and 'Manufacturers' in them.
I have 100,000 results with the words 'Foil' and 'Manufacturers' in them.
I have 27 results with the words 'European Foil Manufacturers' in them.
That makes 3,300,027 results.
I will now list them in reverse order with the most specific at the top.

You've been sold the snake oil at this point. The 3,300,000 other results may have some bearing on the enquiry - but probably not enough to matter. The TRUE bit of optimisation is in being at the top of the 27 results which contain all three words. That's not unimpressive - but it's nowhere near as impressive as coming at the top of a list of three million plus results with all the implications that that brings.

It's then up to you whether you want to invest in the consultancy to put you near the top of that much smaller list.

So how do you avoid buying snake oil? Simple. Speech marks.

The next time you hear the line, "Out of over 3 million results, Fred's Foil Company is listed in the Top 5 results for Google for people searching for European Foil Manufacturers" ask the speaker:

What happens if you put speech marks around the search term?

The answer is that the search results are then strictly limited to the exact terms asked for, in the order that the words were listed. So if you enter "European Foil Manufacturers" WITH the speech marks into Google, it comes up with the 27 results, and ignores the single and double word references that propel the answers into the millions.

In other words, IF your clients enter EXACTLY the right words into Google they may pick you from 27 suppliers.

Which is kind of why you bought a website in the first place.

I'm not disparaging SEO as such - I agree with Derek Powazek that good websites have SEO built in from the ground up, in terms of good content and appropriate tags, and all the rest of the arsenal. There's always room for a consultant who specialises in HTML to tweak that and gain a few places on the Google ladder.

But bright SEO consultants shouldn't try and fool a room with spurious maths.