Web Marketing Scams: Scare the Customer with Bogus Scores

The Boogeyman of marketing is low numbers. It doesn't matter what metric we're using, low is just bad. So whenever someone shows us low numbers about our website, the primary destination of all of our marketing efforts, we get a little scared that they may be right.

However, much like the Boogeyman, most of these low numbers and poor performance metrics sent, unsolicited, are just garbage. Here's an actual report a client received in email yesterday:

He forwarded to me and I had to let him know what all of this meant and why it was garbage. He said he'd thought it was funny and was sharing with me, because he's fully aware of how invested and successful our marketing efforts have been for him and his company. But those numbers were there, in blue and orange, and I had to respond to them.

This particular vendor chose four metrics to spook my client: Performance, Accessibility, SEO, and Best Practices. Immediately you can tell this is unfiltered BS designed to scare a client into a call because they don't want low scores in these four areas which MUST be important... Here's my response to my client:

They have no idea about traffic without access to analytics. This is completely made up or?pulled from services like SpyFu or AHref, which are all guesses.

Every "stat" on their page is a guess and fiction.?

Speed is bullsh*t. It's based on nothing; if you have cable or fiber or mobile data, like most humans, your site shows up fast - unless you're having carrier problems in which case they all do. Speed is a non-issue these days.

Accessibility is also bullsh*t. It's using the ADA standards which no one can conform to unless you're a blank page.

SEO is the biggest joke. SEO takes months and years of constant content feeding. You can't "analyze" it without knowing the terms you're hoping to get found for and measuring the page analytics - which they can't see.

Best Practices - what's that? Their definition I'm sure.

Bottom line, I had to defend our company because of fear mongering by an "agency" trying to poach customers. If they had given ANY credible findings, I would have welcomed this. Who doesn't want to improve their website? But there has to be some rational thought and acceptance of consequences to any actions taken on a website. Let's look at the only two actual measurable traits of a website that they put forth: Speed and SEO.

Speed is relative. Back in the days of AOL and modems, speed was very concerning. Page speed was judged in minutes. But today we have cable, fiber, 5G, etc. and speed is almost irrelevant, yet we are still impatient. This particular person cited a score of 30, which is out of 100 on the Google PageSpeed measurement. Did you know Google has a PageSpeed measurement? Your clients certainly don't. Here's the reality about that - nobody gets 100. And the Google PageSpeed is based on factors that you aren't using Google preferred standards, such as Webp images. You've heard of GIF and JPG and PNG, but probably not Webp. Is it better? Maybe, but most of us don't use it, so that's a penalty in Google's eyes, at least for this score. The Google PageSpeed tool helps you see things that may be slowing your site down, but we're talking milliseconds. The end user isn't aware of ANY of this unless your site is so poorly built it takes many seconds to load.

So is the Google PageSpeed important? The fear monger says yes, because it impacts SEO! Full disclosure, Google PageSpeed impacts SEO about as much as your levels of Omega 3 and 6 impact your health. It's a factor, but not one of the huge ones.

Fun Fact about PageSpeed - Google's Adwords page has a score of 30, same as my client. FedEx.com has a PageSpeed score of 18. I guess their website will put them out of business. Pitiful.

SEO, on the other hand, is absolutely a critical success factor, but cannot ever be measured with an external tool in one whack. Search Engine Optimization is an ongoing effort measured in weeks, months, and years. Certainly there are key things you need to do such as putting your city and state in your titles, using only one H1 tag per page, and writing content that is actually something people search for. But the biggest part of SEO is continuing to feed your website with content on a regular basis so the Search Engines look at your Optimized pages. So how do you get a low score for SEO from this agency? I guess you just make it up.

My client is a B to B business with a few key products. If you search for their name, they show up. If you search for their product, they show up. If you search for the scientific principles their product is based on, they do not show up. Nor do their competitors, because that isn't their SEO focus. SEO is all about your audience and getting them to find you on the most typical searches. So their SEO goals are easy.

Here's another client who does need great SEO, because they're a spine surgeon and want patients to find them. I won't share his name, but google "spine surgeon Atlanta" and he is usually the first result. He's the first result because we work on his SEO constantly and Google rewards that effort. But any fool can tell you they're "doing SEO" - what the hell does that even mean? You build a page, you create a title, you use the right formatting. Now what? How do you get the page to rank? You'll hear a lot of garbage from vendors about backlinks, and skyscraper writing, and on-site/off-site links, etc. but the bottom line for SEO is simple: you have to create decent content and put it on your site. Consistently. Doing it once or twice won't work. It has to be ongoing. Here's a screenshot of my client's site sessions:

This shows over two years of work, with another two+ years overlayed. How do you get that to happen? Constant care and feeding of the site with relevant content. There is NO SUBSTITUTE for a great content plan to rank. Nothing compares even close. All of the little tips and tricks for SEO are pointless without content Google recognizes. And there are no paid ads involved - it's 100% organic.

So any SEO score you receive from someone who can't look at your years of labor and effort is just a wild guess. Also, this client had a PageSpeed score of 18, so I guess they'll never be successful. Oh, wait, they already ARE.

Summary

Don't worry about vendor assessments with scores. They're likely all garbage and fear. If they cannot specifically tell you 3 things you can improve, then they're using formulas. When we give assessments to doctors - and we're always asked - we tell them specific things that are on their website. No mysterious numbers or ambiguous terms. When you are evaluating a company for their help marketing your practice, look for specific information they provide you. And if they tell you they can "get you to the top of page 1 in x weeks", run for the hills.