Do You Know What You Bought? BSEO and the Undercoating Problem
It is October, so here is the scariest thing in most businesses: a bill you cannot explain. It comes every month. It gets paid every month. And if somebody stopped you in the parking lot and asked what is actually in it, you would say something like “you know, the SEO stuff” and change the subject. As an SEO company on Long Island and on the California coast, we have a name for that bill. We call it BSEO.
The undercoating problem
Larry, here at The Final Code, tells a story about trucks. Years ago, dealers sold clear coat undercoating, a couple of hundred bucks, as he remembers it, to protect everything underneath. Plenty of people paid for it. What a lot of them got was something like silicone sprayed under the truck, which looked great on the lot and lasted about a day.
Nobody crawled under the truck to check. That was the whole business model.
That is BSEO in one picture. In Larry’s words: “BSEO is you not knowing what you bought. You bought something you don’t know.” Not a scam, necessarily. Sometimes the work is real. The problem is that you would have no way of telling either way.
Two receipts for the same money
Here is the receipt most owners have for their SEO, and the one they should have.
Monthly SEO
what most owners could tell you
- Target terms???
- Pages built or changed???
- Rank, then and now???
- Who owns the accounts???
- What you keep if you leave???
Monthly SEO
what you should be able to tell us
- Target termsListed, by name
- Pages built or changedListed, by address
- Rank, then and nowFor every term
- Who owns the accountsYou do
- What you keep if you leaveAll of it
A drawing, not anybody's real bill. Same money on both. Only one of them tells you what it bought.
The usual defense is “well, I’m not a techie.” Larry’s answer to that one is blunt: “The minute you divulge that, that’s how you get taken.” Say it to the wrong company and you have just told them nobody is going to check. You do not need to be a techie. You need a receipt.
The five things you should be able to name
Crawl under the truck. If you can answer these five without calling anybody, you have SEO. If you cannot, you might have BSEO, and the only way to find out is to ask.
- Your target terms.The actual searches your SEO is going after, written down. Not "keywords" in general. The ten, or fifty, or hundred phrases you believe a buyer types right before they pick a company like yours.
- The pages that were built or changed.Every month, a list of addresses on your own website that are new or different. If nothing on the site changed, ask what the money did.
- Where you ranked then, and where you rank now.For each of those terms, checked from where your customers are, not from your desk, because you are probably not ranking where you think you are. Your own Google Search Console will show you the trend for free.
- Who owns the accounts.Your Google Business Profile, your Search Console, your analytics, your domain. They should be in your name, with the company you hire added as a guest.
- What you keep if you leave.Larry likes work that transfers rather than locks you in. The pages, the content and the accounts should stay with you the day you stop paying. If leaving means starting over, you were renting, not building.
If those questions make you uncomfortable, that is the useful kind of uncomfortable. We wrote the red flags out in full in 10 red flags your SEO company is wasting your money, and what a monthly report should hold in what your SEO report should actually show you.
Asking is the whole fix
Here is the part that should cheer you up. Every one of those five is a reasonable thing to ask for, and a real SEO company has all of it in a folder already. Ask on a Tuesday, and the good ones send it over before lunch.
The other kind gets very busy. Suddenly the report is “being updated,” the terms are “proprietary,” and the accounts are “set up on our side for convenience.” That is the silicone under the truck. And unlike the truck, you can check this one without lying on the driveway. If the work is real but nobody can show you what changed, start with what a good website optimization actually changes.
Send us your website. We will show you the searches you are found for today, the ones you are missing, and whether the work you are paying for is moving any of them. No charge, and no obligation. Or call or text 805.243.8321.
Get My Free Visibility ReportIt is fine not to be a techie. It is not fine to pay for something every month and have no idea what it is. A receipt you can read is the first thing real SEO services give you.