Web marketing experts

X is an unknown quantity and spurt is a drip under pressure

Marketing experts and companies that proclaim expert status really get on my nerves.

This is our preferred explanation of an expert, but all said and done this post will make more sense in a few days, we don't like beating up on our competition but for the preservation of our industry that has been called every name under the sun we are thinking of starting a column 'beware of the SEO company that promises guarantees and is a self proclaimed expert'

Now I am the first to say we are marketing professionals but calling ones self a 'marketing expert' is a big statement. Google 'marketing experts' or 'marketing experts Australia' and you don't really get the cream of Australian internet marketing companies more the dregs of the barrel. Except for one exception roi.com.au which is a respectable professional marketing company.

Historically people that proclaim expert status are often going for the gullible sale, promising the world and worse offering guarantees that are unethical or just not worth the web space they are written on. Our favourite is guaranteeing keyword ranking. Do these people own Yahoo or Google, can they guarantee something they have no control over at all.

The same companies try and show how good they are by offering ranking of search terms that could be pretty much considered a long tail of search phrase or a little competition phrase. Web marketing experts, I know I am having a prattle here but the term 'marketing expert' just really gets on my nerves.

Personally I have a degree in marketing and I would never consider myself an expert. There is always people and brains that come up with ideas you had never thought of, and if you truly were an expert at marketing would you not know it all and creativity would drip from your pores.

Marketing professionals is a much more umm professional term to run with, everybody is jumping on the SEO marketing band wagon and many new companies we believe don't have a clue what it really takes to rank a client in a tough market for primary key word phrases. These same companies offer $400 SEO campaigns and in today's competitive market you simple cannot perform top results for this kind of money.

Now we are not saying that you should offer no backup of your services, quite the opposite you should be able to offer your clients a clear plan of what they can expect and how long it should take to get the positioning they require. We are just saying frivolous guarantees is not the way to do it.

In essence beware of the SEO company that is calling them selves marketing experts and whom offer ranking guarantees, this practise is cheap and smells of a used car salesman kind of tactic.

What do you think, would you be interested in a series that outlines unethical SEO companies 'seo marketing experts' and why? It is a slippery ground calling out your own competition, would it be good for the industry?