Why SEO in India is losing respect (Part-1)

This is a growing trend in India, but is not necessarily restricted to the country. The number of companies offering SEO is growing every day across the globe, but the field itself is losing respect. Below are 5 reasons why people do not trust SEO, especially in India:

1) Insane number of agencies

The number of SEO agencies, as well as other digital marketing agencies that offer SEO as a service, has been increasing at an exponential rate in India, especially in cities like Mumbai and Bengaluru. If every street has a McDonald’s, McDonald’s would certainly be popular, but seeing a McDonald’s outlet wouldn’t count as a wonder. Likewise, the awe that companies had for SEO in the initial days is fast disappearing in the crowd.

Another thing to note is that assessing which one among a million agencies is good is close to impractical, so people/companies may approach the wrong agency, which may elate the client by charging dirt-cheap and evade the same client once the promises fail due to cheap SEO practices. This is the first and foremost reason why SEO is losing respect in India.

2) Low quality education

The exponential growth in the number of SEO agencies is a direct result of easily feasible training facilities. Today, there are plenty of courses, both online and offline that teach SEO. However, getting trained through such theoretical approaches does not help at all in SEO.

Knowing the ranking factors is easy, but being able to rank in a competitive environment is certainly not. As most trainers stick to basic SEO and fail to go beyond, this issue remains unaddressed, and as a result, the quality of recommendations and implementations goes down. This in turn results in low performance, or in worst case scenarios, negative performance, which obviously leads to distrust in SEO.

3) In-house Capabilities

Today, more and more companies are trying to ensure that SEO is done in front of their eyes. For the advantages of direct accountability and easy access, they try to keep in-house SEO experts.

This is, however, damaging in the long run for the expert, as:

• Looking at a single campaign alone for prolonged periods of time may hide parts of the bigger picture.
• Lack of peers and seniors in the field results in a slower learning curve.

As a result, the SEO expert gains knowledge and skill at a slower pace, and in course of time gets reduced in efficiency.

4) Impractical Promises

This is not restricted to the field of SEO, but is highly prevalent in the field. Many companies, including some of the top agencies in India, give completely impractical promises to prospects in hopes of winning contracts and earning more money. As neither the landscape nor the funnel is analyzed and/or explained properly before arriving at the numbers, the prospect/client keeps very high hopes, which get shattered when results fail to arrive.

5) Need for Speed

This issue exists usually at the client’s side, but should not be ignored when it is at the agency’s side.

SEO does not always give immediate results. However, as some clients are ever suspicious and like to see immediate results, SEO agencies try shortcuts. These include Black Hat practices, pseudo-optimization as well as partial optimization tactics. The result may certainly look promising in the short term, but when the contract extends, there is no going back and rectifying the past mistakes.

In the upcoming blogs, we’ll list 5 more reasons why SEO fails, as well as tips to overcome all the 10 problems.