It’s entertaining to hear clients rant about SEO vendors (particularly when it’s not Netconcepts being ranted about! ) Last year I got a chuckle out of the story that Chris Smith from our client SuperPages.com regaled me with. (Chris manages the SEO, web development and a bunch of other stuff for SuperPages). Verizon Information Directories is a fairly conservative company, so when one of the execs from an SEO vendor that begins with a Z showed up in SANDALS for a pitch meeting, it not surprisingly didn’t go over well. No deals were struck that day, or ever, with that vendor.

Stuff like that seems like common sense. At least it does to me. But surprisingly vendors make big mistakes before, during, or shortly after the pitch, and it all goes off the rails. Or perhaps they win the deal, only to blow the relationship and any chance of future work during the engagement.

Inspired by the sandals incident, Chris Smith has kindly offered his advice to SEOs wanting to pitch SuperPages (by way of disclosure, they are a client of Netconcepts and they are happy with us, so best of luck to you )

According to Chris, SEOs should…

• have longevity and track record of at least somewhat related work
• not have promoted itself using unrealistic promises and representations
• have a clean record (no black-hat methods)
• not have tried to impress with a cursory 5-minute site assessment leading to naive recommendations
• not have insulted our technical work
• not have made claims of secret methods/knowledge
• have priced their services reasonably
• have posted information on their website about the companies/sites they’ve done work for
• have demonstrated strong technical work on their own site as well as clients’ sites
• have good people and make that evident on their company site
• have projected a professional demeanor
• not have pestered or been hard-selling
• be flexible in legal contract negotiations, once selected

Good stuff! Read Chris’ full article: “How major companies choose SEOs”.

And then I saw just recently that Lee Odden of SEO vendor TopRank offered his Top 5 Ways SEO Agencies and Clients Piss Each Other Off.

Here are Lee’s top 5 ways SEO agencies tick off their clients:

• Agency overpromises and underdelivers
• Agency uses tricks and gets client site penalized by search engines
• SEO techie insults client side account manager on lack of knowledge about topics such as latent semantic indexing and not knowing the name of the last Google update
• SEO agency waits for search marketing performance to fail before assessing and implementing new SEO recommendations
• Agency uses client brand name in promotional materials without client permission

And here are Lee’s top 5 ways clients tick off their SEO agencies:

• Client doesn’t pay on time
• Client overwrites on-page site optimization or implements a new web design without telling the SEO agency
• Client fires the SEO firm without warning, without reason and via email
• Client wants to try every trick they’ve read about in 2 year old forum posts or heard about from someone’s cousin’s friend who has an ex-girlfriend working at MSN
• Client asks for work outside the scope of the agreement for no additional fees - frequently

I recommend going to Lee’s original post as the comments are just as enlightening.