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Two weeks ago we ran a community poll asking if you think an SEO company should be penalized for the work they do on their client sites. The results are pretty interesting.
- 38% said the SEO company should be penalized no matter what.
- 33% said the SEO company should only be penalized if they did not disclose to their client what tactics they were using.
- 25% said the SEO company should never be penalized, it is not their problem.
We had well over 200 responses but please read my poll disclosure policy before jumping to any scientific conclusions.
Are you surprised by these results?
Forum discussion at Google Webmaster Help & WebmasterWorld.
Image credit to ShutterStock for keyboard grenade
Comments:
Nick Stamoulis
06/14/2012 01:36 pm
It's an interesting scenario. If you can't blame the SEO company, should the website be punished when they didn't know what their SEO provider was doing?
Andy
06/14/2012 02:17 pm
c) No one should be punished as its google's responsibility to get their stuff straight.
Tad Chef
06/14/2012 02:24 pm
Enlarge Your Penalty Now!
Drupal web design
06/14/2012 02:29 pm
Nice and interesting post.Liked it.
cryptblade
06/14/2012 02:38 pm
guarantee that many of the ones voting against the SEO company being punished is one of the failure "boutique" SEOs. I worked for those kinds of companies. I got recruited by similar companies. They still call me to this day. Those companies suck. See clients- big or small - hire digital/search marketing experts. they only think they need SEO. or they had tasted success from past SEO efforts and want a good provider to help them further along. the right SEO company IS that expert for their clients: that company should treat their client like they themselves would want to be treated by their accountant or lawyer. if they dont trust the accountant or lawyer, should the SEO company not be free to fire them? And should the SEO company not be free to sue their accountant if their accountant's practices caused them to be audited and they end up paying penalties if not jail time? Same thing with SEOs - you provide service and expertise. if your service and expertise causes detrimental harm to your clients, you should be held liable.
Giacomo
06/14/2012 02:46 pm
I´m not very surprised about 25% of people, like the guy who wrote the first comment on this post, are totally against the penalization for a bad seo tactics :)
Webstats Art
06/14/2012 05:31 pm
The only reason why it is "bad" is because google says it is bad. Google started their company by copying other people's content and using script to have it delivered to a page. The people who want to bash the SEO probably don't understand how a search engine gets ahead by first copying, embedding or whatever you like to call it. Google should never of claimed any morality in the beginning by saying "Don't be Evil" because they are ones who are DEFINING what evil is.
Dr. Cheeseburger
06/14/2012 08:03 pm
Bad analogy. Accounts and Lawyers require degrees and need to be certified by a governing body before they can legally operate. There is no SEO degree, and there is no technical difference between an expert and a novice.
Anti-SEO
06/14/2012 08:49 pm
LOL ... Are you content producer ?? I am. And I don't have any complaints about Google activity regarding the "copying, embedding or whatever". But I do have a lot of complaints about SEOs activity. Do I need to specify ? I believe you know.
mariachiara marsella
06/15/2012 07:22 am
"Are you surprised by these results?" No, I'm not. I think It's much easier to use good SEO than bad. "Well begun is half done" : yuo can save a lot of time if you use good SEO.
Richard
06/15/2012 11:11 am
Can I ask what is good SEO? I bet the majority here do not truly know!
Richard
06/15/2012 11:22 am
Just because you carry out bad SEO 'in the eyes of Google' it doesn’t mean you truly believe you are carrying out bad SEO. Some people are just trying to make a living doing the best job they can on their website and on their clients websites, but apparently its wrong 'in Googles eyes' and they get punished for it for several weeks or month. Its the same saying, people that don’t make mistakes, don’t do anything. I'm sure most people that say they do good SEO, don’t really do SEO. Do people really truly know what good SEO is? I don’t think so. Not now anyway. For these reasons, sites shouldn’t be penalised. BAD SEO should just not work. It should hold zero value. If bad SEO didn’t work then people would stop it. Not get penalised and lose their lively hood because of it.
Inbound Marketing Expert
06/15/2012 11:59 am
I am totally surprised, But my Vote is company should penalized if they don't disclose what SEO tactics they use and that what Google guideline suggest on hiring seo experts or company
rawing
06/15/2012 12:21 pm
this is destiny
Anti-SEO
06/15/2012 12:27 pm
I bet the majority here do not truly know what is SEO in general.
SEM
06/18/2012 05:48 pm
I agree to this article, some SEO companies should be penalize for their bad strategies in using SEO. It is a bad example in the community that many companies will also do. It is a right thing to stop spamming in the internet.
SEO companies
06/25/2012 09:02 am
The question now is in what way should an SEO company should be penalized? When should it be penalized? What's really happening is that once an SEO firm sparks trouble, the concerned business immediately maligns the SEO firm through blogging and it's damaging to reputation. So, that brings the question to naught. It's always been done before.
Multilingual SEO Services
10/15/2012 12:37 pm
I have to agree with you on this because they already damage the SEO companies and try to sue them.