The more I look at our industry the frustrated I am about companies taking marketing budget under the guise of etical SEO and search marketing but not actually delivering any good practice.
It is obvious that only a few agencies really do deliver and make the real effort to alter websites so they can be effective in search. Of course I understand that some CMS systems are very rigid and inflexible and that some corporate sites can take months even for small improvements to be implemented.
What really frustrates me though are all the examples of easily maintained sites that are sold short, poor keyword research that enables crappy search terms to be flagged as great number one spots but are worthless for volumes and ROI for the customers.
Even this week another investigation has revealed a massive PPC campaign by one of the UK’s leading media agencies delivering all the paid search traffic to landing pages that have absolutely no text on them. This media agency has big fluffy London offices and are established around the world and yet their service just sucks to a client that is one the the worlds largest corporations!!!
What also amazes me is that so many of these huge top 100 companies seem to know so little about where their money is going and whether the spend is efficient. That however in my books does not excuse the shoddy service and it annoys the hell out of me that these agencies get away with it just because they are seen as large.
I always imagined that corporate companies would look after their marketing bucks but it seems the people charged with this do not get it, one day a big London agency will get the expertise in to analyse their competitors and then use that analysis to pitch the business away and do it properly.
In the meantime I may well consider starting an analysis thread to name and shame bad practice, this is endemic in our industry at all levels.
unlike traditional advertising, ppc should be easy to monitor so budgets are not wasted – they should trial the ppc ads out first, rather than throwing money away, especially on branded terms which should cost pennies rather pounds per click!
the landing page practices really are a a ongoing test.