Grumpy SEO Guy (0:00)

This is Grumpy SEO Guy, episode 103, a scam from buyers that you might encounter. You're listening to Grumpy SEO Guy, the SEO podcast that doesn't waste your time with nonsense that doesn't work. I'm the grumpy SEO Guy, and I'm sharing with you the strategies that have helped me successfully run my SEO agency for the last 14 years. In this podcast, I'll be sharing my knowledge and experience, discussing tips and strategies, and trying to help you cut through the confusion that permeates this industry. If you listen to this podcast, you will know more about SEO than 99% of people on the planet. Ready? Let's get started. I'm the grumpy SEO guy. Let me tell you why I'm grumpy today. I'm grumpy today because buyers can be scammers. In the past, we've talked about some of the scams you might see in the SEO industry. And in this episode, we're going to talk about a scam that a buyer tried to run on me a long time ago. And we're going to talk about buyers in general. Okay, let's get started. But before we do that, my lawyer tells me that I have to say this right now. A quick disclaimer before we get started. Everything I say here is based on my experience and opinion from 14 years in the industry. I don't officially know how Google or any other search engines work. Everything I say here is hypothetical. And based on my experience, this podcast does not constitute advice or services. What worked for me may or may not work for you. Okay, back to the show. So I've discussed on this podcast before that there are some scammers that are sellers, and we have a whole episode talking about the different ways that somebody can scam you. Okay? But on this episode, we're gonna talk about a buyer scam. This actually. I actually had somebody try to do this to me, like, a really long time ago when I was getting started, and I didn't. So I didn't fall for it. I'll tell you what I did. Although, to be totally honest, I didn't realize it was a scam until afterwards. I just thought it was, like, a bad proposition, so I rejected it anyway. But, like, I will. I will. I'll tell you. I'll tell you what he said, what I said, and how it's a scam and what you should say. But before. Before we do that, I want to talk a little bit about buyers in general, because we talk a lot about selling SEO. We're gonna talk a little bit about buyers, okay? So something that my sales coach regularly drives into our heads is this. Buyers do four things, okay? I'm gonna tell you what they are. Don't worry. They do four things. They gather information, they lie, they commit to nothing, and they run and hide. Now, we're not gonna spend any time talking about these because that's not really the purpose of this episode. But if you have ever been in a sales position, you know exactly what I'm talking about. You probably experienced all of, maybe even all of them from the same person, right? Those are the four things that buyers do. Okay? Anyways, now let's talk about the person who contacted me. Okay? Let's talk about the buyer scam. This is a scam. Okay? This is a big scam. So here's what happened. I got a message from somebody, and they said something like, hey, I really like your product. Or your, like. I don't remember how they phrase it. Cause a long time ago, I really like your offering your product, your backlinks package, whatever it was. I honestly don't remember. Like, I really like it. Listen, we do a lot of business with SEO. We have a huge budget, and they're like, so we were wondering if you could give us, like, a free review copy. If it seemed like it was really good quality, we would totally spend a lot of money with you. And I'm like, again, I wasn't even, like, realizing this was a scam until, like, later. But it doesn't matter. Cause my response was the same anyway. And this is the. If anyone, okay, if you're an SEO provider and anybody contacts you with this kind of message, this should be your response, too. This was my response because it was true. Okay? I said, thanks for your interest. Whatever. I said, look, we do not. I'll give you guys the short version, and then I'll give you the long version. The short version is this. We don't offer discounts on individual packages in the future. If you're doing a lot of business with us and you want to have a talk about discounts, of course you can do that sometimes if you're paying, like, if you're buying a lot of things up front instead of month to month and you want like a 5% discount, yeah, that's fine. Maybe every case is different, okay? But it's not unheard of, okay? If you want to buy 12 months at once instead of one month at a time, you want 10%, 5% discount for doing that. Fine. That's probably something we can talk about. But we don't do free work on the promise that maybe, if you like it, you will therefore reward us with spending a lot on a large amount of business. No, no, no, no. Hard no on that one. So, anyway, so let me explain. I feel like most of you understand this, but let me explain why this is a scam, okay? And then I'm going to give you the long answer to that question, because I can already tell that some people are like grumpiest yoga. You should do the free work, the free backdink. Okay, hold on for a second. Here's why it's a scam. This person who emailed me had, or I think it was, I don't think it was an email. I think it was a message. They had no intention of buying anything from me ever. What they wanted was free SEO. And it wasn't just me that they contacted. I bet you they contacted all of the SEO providers they could find. Because some chump is gonna, no offense, is gonna agree to it, and then that person's gonna get free SEO. They're never gonna buy anything, though. They're gonna keep doing this. And some. Some fraction of the people will be agreeing to it and giving them. And they will be getting free SEO. If you email, let's say 50 SEO providers and two of them are like, oh, yeah, here's some samples. You just got two free SEO projects, by the way. I'm not. Somebody's gonna hear this and be like, oh, that sounds really smart. No, it's dumb. Don't do it. Because no respectable SEO company will even agree to these terms. Okay? It's kind of like. It's kind of like the whole, like, we haven't done an episode on this yet, but we're going to. It's kind of like a free audit. Free audits are almost always worthless. And I might do an entire episode on why free audits are worthless. Okay, but that's another topic. Look, so the point is, this person was never gonna buy anything from anyone. They're just trying to get some people to agree to give them some free SEO, and they keep doing it, and they will get free SEO. It's not going to be good quality SEO, of course, but. Well, I don't know. It might be. Anyways, so that's why it's a scam. It's a scam because they're trying to convince you. Oh, well, if we do. If we do a really good job, if they like our quality, they will spend a Lot of money with us. No, no, they won't. No, they won't. And even if your quality is incredible, right, they will find some weird reason not to do it. Right? Because they had no intention of buying anything from you to begin with. And anyway, look, here's the long answer to that question, okay? The reason we don't do free samples is because I don't know about you, but we don't do enough volume to be able to do free samples for people who. Look, there are. How do I say this? I was just having this conversation with somebody the other day. There are very large SEO agencies who charge way more than they should, but it doesn't. The point is they charge a lot of money. They might have resource, although they also spend a lot of that money on fancy offices. Anyway, they might be able to get away with doing some free sample work because of the amount of volume they do, but we don't. Okay, like just. Just. It doesn't work that way. Like, there's a point in SEO where if you scale to a certain degree, it becomes spammy because it becomes very difficult to maintain and control. So we are below that threshold. Okay? I specifically am very proud of the fact that nothing we do is spammy. And if we're just giving out backlin to whoever wants them to check our quality, no, that would enter into spammy territory. Okay, now there's another argument, and I can hear somebody saying this, like, well, I went to a cafe the other day and they gave out a free sample. And then I did buy. I bought a cake from them because it was so good. And that's how it works. Grumpy SEO guy. Again, volume, okay? That cafe or whatever you went to probably does a lot of volume. And they can afford to give you a little slice of a cake because maybe a certain number of people will buy one. Look, I don't know. I haven't done. I haven't seen their accounting documents. I don't know. But probably that's the reason it works. Or. Yes, there are some industries that do millions of units of product every week or month or year. They can probably send you a couple freebies for you to evaluate the quality. Okay. But not us. So, like, I don't have millions of potential backlinks available and. Yo, you just want a couple to check out our quality. Oh, of course, bro. No. Plus plus Private blog portfolio. Remember? Private. Okay. If I just share them with everybody, that would put my agency at risk, wouldn't it? Terrible idea. You know what? Our paying clients don't even get lists of our backlinks. So some random person who's like, whoa, can I just see the quality of your work? No, you can't go away. So anyway, it's a scam. If anybody contacts you and they say, hey, we really like your product, we were just wondering. And we do a lot of SEO business. We spend so much money. If you give us some free samples and we like them, we will definitely spend a lot of money with you. It sounds like if you're just starting out, like, if you're novice, that sounds cool. Again, I agree with you that it could sound cool. Like, whoa, a promise of a lot of money. No, no, no. It's a total scam. They're not gonna buy anything from you or from anyone else. Do not agree to those scammy conditions, okay? Because they're horrible. Okay, let's talk really quickly because I know, I know this episode, this isn't the episode, but I know because I mentioned that free audits are dumb. I know that somebody is listening. They're like, why are free audits bad? I got a free audit. Okay, short. Very, very short answer. Very, very short answer right here. Number one, free audits are okay. Okay, I can't even. I gotta back up a little bit even more before I get into that. Okay, first of all, a free audit is in basically 100% of cases. A free audit is like a sales tool to try and get business from somebody. Well, they did a free audit for us. Oh, yeah. I'll definitely give them some money or, you know, oh, free audit. Oh. And then if they find they pay for an audit or I'm sorry, they give you an audit for free, and then like, well, if you want them to fix your problems or something, you have to pay them. Right? I mean, I understand the theory, but let me. Okay, let's take that step back that we were just talking about. Okay, Number one question. What is the purpose of SEO? The purpose of SEO is to get to the top of the search engines, okay? That is the purpose of SEO. Now, let me. Let me ask you a question. Do you think that the solution to your plight of not being at the top of the search engines, do you think that solution will be found in a free audit? I'm going to tell you the answer is no. The answer to your question of why am I not ranking will not be found in a free audit? Okay? It will not be found in a free. Now, if you think that it will be, go ahead and get some free audits. If you feel comfortable telling people what your website is. Okay, because, like, I wouldn't. Because I wouldn't trust anybody who offers a free audit and I wouldn't want those people knowing what my website is. But if you're all right with that, yeah, go ahead, get your free audit. The answer to the question of why you are not at the top of the search engine will not be found in a free audit. However. Therefore, a free audit is basically worthless from an SEO perspective. Because remember, the purpose of SEO is to get to the top of the search engines. I don't know why. I don't know why there's confusion about this. The purpose of SEO is to get to the top of the search engines. That's the. There is no other purpose for SEO other than getting to the top of the search engines. Anyway, it doesn't matter. It's funny, though, when people try to, like, describe, like, why they do SEO and that's not their answer. Like, that is the only reason that you do SEO. Anyways. Look, here's. Here's my last point on that. Again, we're going to do a full episode on this, but here's. Here's. Oh, it's gonna be such a good episode. Look, here's my last point, though. If you want a free SEO audit, just go search for that online. You don't even have to. You don't even have to. The person who contacted you who's like, oh, my agency does free SEO audits. Would you like one? You want to know what they're probably doing? They're probably just doing a free online audit anyway, right? You probably find it yourself. Literally search for free SEO audit. And I'm not recommending any of the results. Okay? Because you're not going to find what you need in a free SEO audit. You're actually not going to find what you need in an SEO audit, period. But we're not going to get into what the difference between audits and other things are. So I'm just going to leave it at this. If you want a free SEO audit, literally, go search for it. Run all of them. Run all of them. Because they're all free. Okay. First of all, I guarantee you they're going to try and sell you stuff, right? Number two, I guarantee that there's no. There's no audit result that has a line item or whatever on it that is, like, the reason you're not ranking. Okay, we're going to go into that more in the, in the real episode. I just, I just want you to be aware that like, you're not. There's. Nobody has ever done an SEO audit and been like, oh, that's the reason I changed my meta description or whatever thing the audit is looking at. And that's not. That's not the re. Guys. That's not the reason that you rank or don't rank, okay? Anyway, if you want a free one, just go do a free one anyway online, okay? It's not gonna have actionable steps. And even if it does. Well, it might. Yeah, I probably shouldn't put it that way. It might, but they're probably not gonna do much, right? It's kind of like this is not the best comparison, but it's kind of like when people are doing those HCU audits, like, helpful content updates or like, I don't know, I saw something about. I think I saw something about, like, an EEAT audit or something, right? Like expertise, experience, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness. Right? Like. No, no. Because first of all, it's as silly as thinking you can do an audit for one of those things, right? Like, HCU has nothing. Has very little to do with content. And we actually did, in my opinion, of course, and we did an episode on what I think HCU is and why everybody was going crazy for it. Eat is not a ranking factor. Google says it's not a ranking factor. If you go listen to that episode, I even give you the link to the webpage where Google on Google's own website says, EEAT is not a ranking factor. So it's like, there are EEAT audits, but they're dumb wastes of time because EEAT is not a ranking factor. If something is not a ranking factor, it is not SEO, okay? Because why? The purpose of SEO is to get to the top of the search engines. So if EEAT will not get you to the top of the search engines, EEAT is not SEO, is it? Anyway, Google themselves say it's not a ranking factor. So we're done with that topic. But anyways, the point is, there's, like. I actually forgot my point that I was gonna make about audits. There were HCU audits which are scams because HCU isn't what you think it is. There's EEAT audits, which are scams because EEAT is not a ranking factor. But the point is, audits in general are not the answer to your SEO problems. Like. And just. We'll explain more later, but I just want you to be aware that there is, okay? There are things that you can look at on your website and with Your competition, et cetera. That might answer the question of why are you not ranking? But an audit is not what that is. Okay. It's kind of like, you remember when I was talking about how there's a difference between advising, consulting, mentoring and coaching, right? Like, and those words get used interchangeably. Right? But they're very different things. Okay. Like for example, we do advisory calls where you're. Where I'm answering your questions, right? Which is technically not consulting, because consulting is being paid to do a thing. Right? Like if you were paying me to build you a website, that's consulting. I don't build websites. Or if you were paying me to do actual SEO for you, that's consulting. But if you have questions and we're on zoom talking about it, that's advising. Okay? And so on. Anyway, the point is, an audit is not the thing that will answer your questions. But we'll talk more about that later. Here's a quick summary, because I know somebody's like, what's the difference? I can't wait until that episode. Okay, look, an audit is a comparison against a standard, right? So if you're auditing a website, even if it's a quote SEO audit, it would be comparing it against some kind of standard. Like, do you have title tags? Do you have meta keywords? Do you have meta tags? Do you have, I don't know, whatever, like keyword stuffing? Which to be fair, is actually an SEO thing, but usually they don't cover that, you know, or like how many, how many title tags. Like that kind of. It's just like, it's like you're comparing against a standard. But there's no such thing. Remember, this is very important. There's no such thing as like an SEO standard for content, because why? And you should know this because you've listened to the previous episodes, because if there was, everyone would do it and then, then everyone would be in the first position, which is not possible. So there has to be something else that plays an important role in ranking besides things like on page factors, which is why we have authority. But anyway, that's like literally a different topic for a different day. And I've also talked about that many, many times in the past. So in conclusion, somebody wanting free samples of your SEO work because they claim they're going to spend a lot of money with you if it's good quality, is a scammer, they're never going to buy anything from you. They're never going to buy anything from another person either. They're just trying to get free work. And number two, free SEO audits are worth what you pay for them. Okay, bye. Thanks for listening. Don't forget to subscribe and if you enjoy this podcast, please leave a review. It would really help the show out. I hope this episode was helpful. If you have any questions or want to suggest a subject for a future episode, you can contact me on Reddit. My username is Grumpy SEO Guy. You can visit the Grumpy SEO Guy subreddit or you can email me@hellorumpyseoguy.com if you email me, please either whitelist my email address or check your junk folders because I've been told that my replies are going into the junk folder and it's probably because we're talking about things like SEO and backlinks, and I think those words will classify an email as spam. And if you want to support the podcast because it's the best source of SEO information on the planet and it's free, you can do so@patreon.com grumpy SEO guy and I will talk to you later. You're listening to Grumpy SEO Guy, the SEO podcast that doesn't waste your time with nonsense doesn't work. Join us next Wednesday for another episode.