Criticism: TOP 100 SEO not that great at all

Konrad Wolfenstein

3 years ago

It's a hot potato and yet the question has been on my mind for a long time: How much of the SEO offers from search engine optimizers and agencies is really good SEO? How can I quickly find out who knows their craft using simple means? I used to be one of the first search engine optimizers with my SEO.AG domain (which I still have) (2001/02).

TOP 100 SEO not so top – Image: Rawpixel.com|Shutterstock.com

SEO is important, but I haven't pursued SEO as my own business model for a long time because my focus has evolved into the area of international business development. SEO is just one of many factors and I get the partners on board if necessary. Admittedly, SEO is a thankless job. The expectations of customers are high. Sometimes it seemed to me that one should conquer the world for pocket money. The “lucrative” offers were best: on a success basis. Sure, you put in the painstaking work to build the SEO world for third parties and then you have to trust that you will then be rewarded accordingly. I can understand the other side too. And because SEO is a very intensive business that only works on a basis of great trust and patience, I was able to develop myself further into the area of my current activity through new contacts.

It started earlier when suddenly almost every print agency that had just gone online in a bad way then started offering search engine optimization in big letters. And because SEO is an opaque market where you could use a lot of tricks to calculate the numbers, all sorts of things and consequently also the soldiers of fortune who were in a gold-digging mood gathered under the SEO sun. Nowadays, SEO is downright inflationary. Some people still make it a secret science, for others it is already all-inclusive in the various standard, premium, gold and whatnot packages. Others got the hang of pimping numbers so that they were “great”. Great but in the literal sense from incredible to adventurous.

So I'm out there and can say with a clear conscience that I'm not polluting the internet or even engaging in SEO bashing. But quite often I receive “great” SEO offers from both home and abroad via LinkedIn, and if you take a closer look at them, you quickly realize how much hot air there is actually behind them. The question is: If I get all these “great” offers, who else gets this spam and can also distinguish who is really good and who isn’t?

Because for some SEO is not the core “competence” (which they usually know themselves), SEO is used as a stepping stone to incorporate the actual different packages and tout them as just as important. Sales is the real business.

Even with high-class references, we don't save money. However, it is usually never clear exactly what was done. Who did the actual work. As a rule, the company's internal IT or the responsible marketing department has already done a good job. Did some things right. But then you get external SEO support because you want it to be even better and presto the entire service is listed as an SEO reference with external support. Already experienced everything.

Admittedly, it is also difficult to implement the desired SEO measures for the customer. The larger the company, the greater the internal politics and adversity of getting such necessities through. It's also grueling to push through every little point through countless meetings and discussions. That some people then say: “Hey, why am I pulling myself out here, then I’ll just do business as usual.” If they're happy with it, fine! I’ll let myself pay for the nervous effort.” I can understand it, but it's difficult in the long term for your passion for SEO.

But not everyone is like that. This affects the customer and it also affects SEO. Those who mean well have to find each other and that's not that easy.

On the one hand, they rattle particularly loudly where the SEO performance is questionable and on the other hand, customers cannot find the right SEO for themselves because they tend to operate quietly and inconspicuously. SEO is a lot of craft, analysis, research and observation.

The question for me now was how someone who doesn't understand the SEO market can distinguish the good from the bad? There has to be a way, apart from the marketing showbiz and the reference show-offs, to at least find clues to examine the SEO service in question or the SEO agency in question more critically.

SEO is important, but it’s intensive work – Image: Rawpixel.com|Shutterstock.com

I proceeded in a similar way to my solar installer project and put two key points in the room that can be verified from the outside:

HTTPS protocol
Page Speed

The HTTPS protocol is the front part that is required in the URL when we access a website: https:// xpert.digital

When we type the domain address of the website in the browser, the http:// or https:// protocol is automatically added first, depending on which protocol is stored as the default in the browser. Nowadays it should be the HTTPS protocol.

Suitable for:

Over 30% of solar installers have not yet arrived in the digital age

Since the switch from HTTP to HTTPS protocol does not involve any major effort for IT, for me the evaluation described above was an indication of whether someone is preparing for digitalization or not. If the old protocol was still present, the conclusion was that no digital transformation was taking place here. As I said, this may not apply to everyone, but it is an indication and, as a whole, is sufficient as an assessment.

When it comes to SEO providers, I actually found 2 that still use the old HTTP protocol. I also crossed them out of the list for further review.

In addition, I checked the respective websites several times over 3 months. This should also be sufficient, especially in the event of a temporary technical error.

The next difficult task was to include who in the further evaluation. Nowadays almost everyone who is online or digital offers what does search engine optimization mean.

To do this, I looked through some SEO provider lists and listing services. Anyone who registers or has themselves listed here has a certain right to be called an SEO expert. I left out others and I think that a total of 1653 SEO providers are representative enough for my small project. It's not like I have an endless amount of time and only do this on the side. As a fan of numbers and statistics, I believe that they should be reliable facts and that they must be sufficient for me. Ultimately, I need the certainty that I have a good SEO in front of me, even myself.

Let's go back to the conditions:

Repeated checking of the website for the two conditions described below in order to rule out temporary technical problems. The tests were carried out from November 2020 to January 2021. Randomly selected 10 times in each month. The test was automated and programmed by myself.
Check for HTTPS protocol. Anyone who falls below 80% of the exams is excluded from the statistics. In fact, only two were at 0%. I checked again manually to see whether I had made a mistake, especially since from the outside they were visually well-positioned SEO booths. This is how you can be wrong.

Check the page speed factor!

What’s this about page speed?

I actually once had a case where I had to have a discussion with a customer's IT department who said that Google Page Speed doesn't have much importance for Google rankings. It was “great” to dare to claim that we knew more than Google itself. Actually, I just wanted IT to take measures to speed up the website a little, because it was laming very badly (from the English lame = lame). What should you say to that? Any diplomacy and indirect help is difficult if you block things so head-on.

As early as 2010, Google used page speed as a signal for Google ranking in search results. In 2018, Google expanded this ranking factor to include mobile searches.

In 2020, page speed became part of the page experience rating (user-friendliness) .

It says, among other things:

Optimize user-friendliness

Information about tools you can use to measure and report speed values can be found here . These tools can be used to measure the LCP, FID and CLS values.
whether your site is mobile-friendly with the mobile optimization test

From March 2021, only the mobile version of websites will be indexed and the new ranking signals “Core Web Vitals” will probably be included in the Google placement for the website from May: Core Web Vitals: Google's benchmark for the page experience

In summary and simply put, this is Google Page Speed. There are also fluctuations in the page speed ratings. In my three-month analysis, I always took the highest value at the end.

Then you can check for yourself here on Google: https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/?hl=de

Mobile Page Speed from Xpert.Digital (02/12/2021) – Image: @Google

I check my Xpert.Digital regularly and am relatively well positioned in relation to the market, especially in the MOBILE area. Even Google “only” has a page speed of 57.

This alone shows whether a website is responsive, i.e. mobile-friendly, or not. Websites that are not mobile-friendly end up in the red zone for technical reasons.

My Xpert.Digital is certainly not SEO perfect. I'm working on it as best I can and as long as I have time. I'm not an agency. I am a highly connected one-man show who works as an in-house solution from a management perspective. In order to do the right thing, I have to be able to tinker with and understand things myself in order to be able to collaborate, discuss, coordinate and make decisions with the company's external service providers and employees.

Now, let's get to the evaluations of the 1653 SEO providers mentioned above:

A total 16 out of 1,653 were in the green zone with a page speed of over 90.

182 were in the brown range between 50 and 89.

1,455 of 1653 were in the red zone below 49. These are 88 %.

This means that 88% of the SEO providers analyzed have not managed to optimize their own website in the mobile version for Google searches in a way that meets the SEO standards described above, which will change dramatically this year.

Finally:

No, I will not provide any information about which SEO providers were in the evaluation and how they performed.
Above I have shown some ways in which you can determine this yourself.
I ask you to keep in mind that SEO is an intensive business that cannot be run seriously with a monthly budget of 200 euros. Companies should therefore reconsider their budget planning and not neglect it. Depending on the size of the company and its SEO status, good SEO starts in the four-digit range.
Certainly, SEO is not just page speed. It is one of several factors. This includes content development, backlinking, on-page optimization and much more. But page speed is one of the most important and is a measurement that can be assessed transparently and clearly from the outside.
No, I still do not offer SEO myself.

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