9 Reasons to Avoid Real Estate SEO Firms Like the Plague

© 2010, Brandon Cornett. All rights reserved.

Want some "insider" advice from a former search engine optimization provider? Here it is. You should avoid real estate SEO firms like the swine flu. Here are nine good reasons for doing that.

For several years, I offered search engine optimization (SEO) services to real estate agents and folks in other industries. These days I just manage the Home Buying Institute, because it's more fulfilling than the tedium of real estate SEO work. But you can rest assured that everything I'm about to tell you comes from years of first-hand knowledge.

Several of my former clients have learned to handle their own search engine optimization, without the need to hire a real estate SEO firm for help. Some have learned the ins and outs of online networking, blogging, and other aspects of Internet marketing. One guy [hi Edward] has turned into a blogging machine, and he gets a lot of leads through his SEO and blogging efforts. And let me tell you something -- they are all better off for taking things into their own hands. Here's why...

Why You Should Avoid Real Estate SEO Companies

1. Many so-called SEO experts are actually web developers who simply read a few articles on the subject of search engine optimization. They learned how to toss buzzwords around, such as "link popularity," and they now claim to be gurus in the field of SEO. In truth, many of them only know enough to be dangerous.
2. I'm not petty enough to drop names, but I could easily create a list of 15 real estate SEO firms who have gotten their clients banned from Google and other search engines. I know about this firsthand, because many of their former clients came to me for help.
3. Search engine optimization is not rocket science. Most of it revolves around two things -- (1) writing website content and (2) networking in order to attract links. These are things you should be doing for yourself anyway, for general business purposes. So why outsource them to a real estate SEO firm that's just going to get in the way?
4. I've just stated that writing content for your website and/or blog is a big part of search engine optimization. The trouble is, most SEO people are terrible writers. They merely stuff sentences and paragraphs full of keywords in the desperate quest for good rankings. This kind of content usually comes off as if a six-year-old wrote it.
   
5. Reason #4 is how you end up with sentences like this: "Our Charlotte real estate services are designed to solve all of your Charlotte real estate needs in a professional manner while ensuring your ultimate Charlotte real estate success." Yes, that's from an actual website. I changed the city so as not to embarrass the publisher. Even if somebody did find the site through a search engine, how do you think they would react to this kind of drivel? It doesn't exactly inspire confidence.
   
6. Improving a website's search engine ranking is simple yet time-consuming. It requires patience and persistence. But most real estate SEO firms take on too many clients too quickly -- and those clients demand results. As a result, the SEO firm will cut corners, scale back on the work performed, and use black-hat techniques that end up getting their clients banned from search engines (see #2 above).
7. There's a good chance the SEO company you hire will end up damaging your reputation and pissing off a lot of people. Many of these companies use blog spamming to get links to their clients' websites. Any blogger will tell you that comment spam is a huge annoyance. The SEO firm will use your web address with this spam technique, which means you could start getting angry emails from other webmasters.
8. Search engine optimization is not a tangible product. So it's easy to get ripped off if you don't know how to measure the results. I once worked for a marketing firm that laughed about the "free money" their clients sent them each month -- for services that weren't fully rendered. Needless to say, I didn't work there long. I have heard story after story about real estate agents who were swindled by such companies. It goes something like this: "I had to pay for a year of services in advance, but my search engine rankings were about the same at the end of that year." Get in line with the other victims.
   
9. You can handle SEO for yourself -- and do it better -- just by downloading my e-book on the subject. Or you can pay hundreds or thousands of dollars to a real estate SEO firm who's probably going to do more harm than good. Your choice.