“You can’t handle the truth!” - Col. Jessup, A Few Good Men.

The truth is many companies are outsourcing. Outsourcing isn’t just a hot button in the SEO industry, it is a topic of heated discussion in most businesses. Outsourcing overseas hurts because it takes away jobs from Americans, but American companies must outsource to keep costs low and competitive. It is a no-win situation most of the time, higher costs and less profit or lower costs and being vilified for using overseas help. For SEO companies it can be seen as the forbidden fruit: Use inexpensive (cheap) labor to build your client’s links, write articles, etc., and keep the profits while hoping you are not exploiting human lives in the process.

Of course outsourcing is being done by many SEO firms, whether they will admit it or not. Using freelancers, American or not, is a form of outsourcing and it keeps internal costs down for the company and allows the client to do more with their money, when done correctly. I have no problem with outsourcing; that is an individual decision. I would only hope it is being done ethically and honestly. And, you would hope the quality is there too. Unfortunately, I have seen many emails from overseas companies written in a mutant form of English offering to help my SEO company. These emails would lead me to believe that the highest quality work for the SEO community isn’t being delivered from overseas.

How do you feel about outsourcing in the SEO world? Is it okay to use American labor and not overseas? What are considered good practices?

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If you only knew the power of the Dark Side. - Darth Vader

This month’s comic, “Beware the Dark Side”, deals with those SEO companies that are less than straight forward, and how nice it would be if they were. We always do our best to keep everything we do white hat – we’re always honest with our clients, don’t engage in any unscrupulous practices, and make no secret about how we go about getting rankings for our clients. That being said, not every SEO company is as honest.

When selecting an SEO company, don’t forget to ask about their methods, get some references, and check them out online to see if anybody has complained about them. A little research can help make sure that you end up with a company wearing a white hat and not one wearing a black hat.

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“It Cutts like a knife, but it feels so right.” - Bryan Adams

“Cutt Her Some Slack” is our most niche comic yet. Not only are we focusing on the relatively small SEO community, we have made the focus of the comic a Google engineer named Matt Cutts. And if you don’t know who Matt Cutts is then you are very new to the SEO game. Suffice to say that Mr. Cutts is a big voice in the world of search engine optimization. His blog covers topics ranking from SEO to movies to Google policies and much more.

Of course most people read his blog to discover what they can about Google’s thoughts on search engine optimization. Some SEO experts are a little too involved with the idea of Matt being the messiah and follow him without question. Those are the people we poke a little harmless fun at today. And I’m hopeful Matt takes Rosie’s crush on him in a flattering light, as was intended.

We are sure there aren’t too many shrines devoted to Matt and we are equally sure he has his god complex under control.
In all seriousness, Matt Cutts gives solid and honest advice. But he also works for Google and therefore can only divulge so much information for obvious reasons. I’d also wager Matt’s words are dissected over and over until the true meaning is lost in conspiracy theories and too much reading between lines. This leads to crazy speculation and “fear” of Google; after all they are the 800lb. gorilla ruling over the SEO landscape. But becoming engrossed in what Google wants can sometimes hurt a client. Of course, ignoring Google’s advice and warnings can be equally damaging. Finding a happy medium between those two ideas is the goal for most SEO companies and I guess it wouldn’t hurt if you had a few pictures of Mr. Cutts on the wall for inspiration.
(Matt, if you read this, Rosie is a fictional character and is, in fact, not stalking you.)

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“Abracadabra.” - Alfred Borden, The Prestige

There is a bit of truth to this Ranked Hard. No, there isn’t any sorcery being performed, but I have had more than a few phone calls from potential clients that have spoken with other SEO companies that have gotten similar responses. We are very forthcoming with how we will achieve better rankings in the search engines and as most reputable SEO firms will admit, it isn’t overly complicated. Good content and solid link building are the foundation of any good SEO campaign.

Unfortunately, many SEO companies will say things like, “It’s too complicated to get into,” or “We can’t share or SEO techniques.” When I hear that I immediately tell the perspective client to be very suspicious. When an SEO company isn’t willing to share their methods, it is usually because they have no methods to share or else they are doing things they wish to hide.

Or, maybe they are practicing Black Magic SEO, who knows?

- Shell Harris, Big Oak SEO

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Welcome to the first installment of our SEO comic, “Ranked Hard”!

This is a comic about the trials and tribulations of the mythical staff of Ranked Hard, a growing and ambitious SEO company. There will certainly be parallels to our SEO company, Big Oak, but we won’t tell you where reality and fantasy blur. Although most who perform optimization for a living will certainly have their own ideas about what is taken from real life situations. ;-).

I have posted character bios for the Ranked Hard staff.

• Bradley Smart, President & SEO Consultant
• Gwen Michaels, SEO Researcher
• Roosevelt (Rosie) Jones, VP & SEO Consultant
• Simon Caine, SEO Copywriter

We hope you grow to love them as much as we do.

- Shell Harris, Big Oak SEO

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If you want to know more about Jake, he is a freelance illustrator and graphic artist based in Dallas Texas. His works include the humor web comic Space-Gun as well as the Dallas-based Synesthetic anthology. Here are two more examples of his work.

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