Outsourcing SEO to India
Recently I have seen a new series of sites growing towards the new flavor in town: Outsource your SEO to India… and well… India is a big place for sure and for sure there are a lot of amazing professionals ready to help you in your SEO strategy.
The problem is: You pay peanuts for a service that can backfire and hurt your company more than what you paid for.
Today a clear example:
this was a comment posted in this site
Author : Business Consultant (IP: 117.196.239.157 , 117.196.239.157)
E-mail : henry.jakson@gmail.com
URL : ———-
Whois : http://ws.arin.net/cgi-bin/whois.pl?queryinput=117.196.239.17
Comment:
Thank you for highlighting blogs that focuses on such important matters.
obviously the comment is Spam because I have found the SAME spam in different blogs poiting to SAGE Strategy
The Spam comes from an Indian IP
source: APNIC
role: NS Cell
address: Internet Cell
address: Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited
address: 8th Floor,148-B Statesman House
address: Barakhamba Road, New Delhi - 110 001
country: IN
phone: +91-11-23734057
phone: +91-11-23710183
fax-no: +91-11-23734052
So it’s clear.. they are outsourcing Link Building to India. Ok…
So here are the dangers:
The SEO expert from India, obviously is trying to get NAME REMOVED by rquest ranked for the keyword: Business Consultant, and they are targeting my BLOG because I’m 1st in Google Australia for SEO consultant. Until there… everything seems ok.
But the SEO expert in India… get’s paid peanuts and really doesn’t care for this company reputation, so the SEO guru… uses software that finds dofollow blogs with relevant keywords… the software then sends automatic messages that little have to do with the post in mention. Zero value. Stupid comments… all of them just towards getting one backlink to your site.
Not only the comment is spam… but the comment creates a lovely footprint that gives me the capacity of finding all the spam-actions they have taken towards boosting their ranking.
The concerning part:
the concerning part in my point of view is that this is an Australian company spamming an Australian website. Not only that… get ready for this:
Sage Strategy offers web marketing services – so why is a web marketing company in Australia using these type of techniques to rank higher?
Well, there are 2 potential reasons:
1) they have little idea about web marketing and zero idea about SEO
2) they simply believe that outsourcing SEO to India will provide them top results in Google Australia vs the top Business consultants in the country.
I don’t know which of these 2 options is more scary.
So… is outsourcing SEO to India worth the money?
Yes.
Yes if you have a hobby.
Yes if your site is not directly related to your brand, to your company philosophy and your marketing strategy.
What is the result of this type of activity (blog spamming) ?
Well, in the case of Sage Strategy… I have flagged the spam message and therefor Akismet has some record about the action… and I guess the next time someone googles the name of the company.. they will find my post.
When do you need to outsource?
I think the question needs to be, when can you afford to outsource your SEO… , and my answer is: when you understand the game, when you know what exactly they are doing for you.
How they are doing it.
What system they use to get your links
What is the strategy behind.
Who is really behind.
What tools they use and WHY.
Only when you know how links are being build to your site and how this links are going to benefit your link building strategy, you should think of outsourcing.
Worth the effort?
I don’t think so…
But we will wait and see… if in 1 year they are in top 10 in Google for Business consultant,
then I guess I was wrong and the SEO experts in India being paid 5 aussie dollars where right. 
For all of you Spammers… this is for you:
We have more SEO Ninja Posts right here
Gabriel Machuret
I'm an SEO professional living in the South Coast of NSW - Australia. SEO is what I do... I'm not a web guy, or a webmaster, or a designer... I just do SEO ;) Love it. Enjoy it and I still have fun doing it.
8 / 17 / 2010 2:16 am
The amount of ‘human spam’ comments we get is truly unbelievable – to me, it’s only one step up from automated spam and it’ll do about as much good for your ranking. The most ironic one we had was a post I did about the dangers of buying cheap backlinks packages – the number of comments from outsourced seo people who obviously hadn’t even read the post was unreal; things like ‘dude, that’s a great deal’. I had to approve a couple of them and put my own comment in just to highlight the stupidity!! Have a look (http://www.qclgroup.com/blog/search_engine_optimisation/cheap-backlinks1000-backlinks-for-19-99) if you want to see how bad they are.
Mick Johnson´s last blog ..Choosing the right keywords
[Reply]
8 / 25 / 2010 8:08 am
Hey Gabe,
Plain and simple.. Blog SPAM sux… Time to move on.
So, when do we outsource? When the price is right, or when the price is wrong?
Thanks
Jason
[Reply]
Gabriel Machuret Reply:
August 28th, 2010 at 11:25 pm
Hey Jason… mate, I believe that you can Outsource but ONLY when you control the process… only when you are the commander and not just the buyer.
Make sense?
You CREATE the system… and you ask someone to REPLICATE IT.. instead of buying a bogus system created in Calcutta… (or Kalcuta?) lol
[Reply]
9 / 6 / 2010 7:25 pm
Hi Gab,
I think your last comment actually says the most. I agree outsourcing can be good in limited circumstances, where you are truly guiding the process down to the nth degree, and just having someone do the “grunt work”. But even then, 99% of people offering this type of service (the “grunt work”) don’t have good enough English to pull it off. Which is why unless SEO is a big part of your day, you are probably better of sticking with a reputable Australian SEO consultant / business. The problem there is that a lot of Aussie SEO companies make the same mistakes as people going direct and you still end up with rubbish. I think finding someone genuine must be one of the hardest challenges for the small business uninitiated in SEO.
Brand Police´s last blog ..SEO for WordPress – Getting the Basics Right
[Reply]
9 / 16 / 2010 10:27 pm
A great post, difficult to know who to trust in such a fledgling industry. Even some large companies end up outsourcing to India. The temptation is high and clients and the people selling these services rarely understand the end result so there is little accountability.
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10 / 27 / 2010 12:20 am
I think u guys need to get over yourselves and learn to compete in a global world.
[Reply]
Gabriel Machuret Reply:
October 27th, 2010 at 4:39 am
Hi David. Thanks for stopping by. “Get over yourselves” … well, I’m confused and I find funny your comment. I wonder if you own a website and if you want people in India to post comments in the name of your company as the ones I get from “webmasters in India”.
they usually are like
– luv your post man! please exch linkz with my web? ^_^
Is that the time of link building you want for your company? Then… mmm go for it, embrace the world!
[Reply]
10 / 27 / 2010 10:44 pm
Hi gabriel, yeah, let’s support local SEO experts who scam exorbitant ongoing monthly fees from small to medium sized business when most of the time needed is in the setup and early few months and overall time is minimal. The local SEO gurus are the reason for sourcing overseas providers who do achieve pag 1 rankings and fast and cheaply. I am a small business with page one rankings on 7 key searches and I paid, wait for it under $1,000. My online sales have incresed 6 times. As I said, get over yourselves and compete in the global market..
[Reply]
Gabriel Machuret Reply:
October 27th, 2010 at 10:52 pm
Hi David… I never say let’s support the local experts, because in my case I believe Australia lacks some sort of reality check regarding SEO prices.
My point is not the amount you pay or not… I have SEO packages that are mmm very close to that figure ( check http://www.seopack.com.au) . But that’s not the point.
the point is:
you are 1st and that’s great.
But… will the ranking remain if your competition does a backlink check?
I’m not saying Indian SEO guys are not bad… what I’m saying is… YOU NEED TO KNOW what task you can assign them and what task you shouldn’t .
That’s all…
Many of my clients are in fact from the US and the UK.. and funny wise I got 1 week ago, go and figure by an Indian company.
The reason is: I’m not willing to cut corners .
Regarding get over yourselves… it seems are talking like If I’m the President of the SEO experts in Australia. I’m just 1 guy , with 2 kids, living in a tiny town, doing SEO and enjoying it.
What about you?
(thanks for coming back)
[Reply]
Gabriel Machuret Reply:
October 27th, 2010 at 10:57 pm
by the way … I agree with you David. Monthly fees suck…
point of view, rates should be charged per keyword difficult and amount of link building…
As a small note: in my humble
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2 / 18 / 2011 1:36 am
I suspect the example you list is an automated spam generator for commenting on blogs like this one.
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