Client: Since you built my new website my Google rankings have tanked!
Us: OK, well if that’s true we’ll need to have a look at the structure of the site and the quality of your backlinks…
Client: No! My SEO Company says it’s because you have 70 words in my title tags and there should only be 60!
Us: Well, that’s not really the case anymore, Google takes a lot of factors into account…
Client: I’m paying them $5,000 a month so they must know what they’re talking about! I demand my money back! I demand you fix it free of charge! You don’t know what you’re doing! You should be ashamed to call yourselves a web design company!
Us: All right, give us a few days to look over the site and we’ll get back to you with a plan to address your complaints.
Client: You’d better, or I’ll sue!
We run a backlink analysis for the site. It comes back with thousands of comment spam links, over half of which are from porn sites.
Client: Well? What are you going to do to fix your mistakes on my site?
Us: Actually, as you can see from these reports your Google rank has collapsed because your site has thousands of low quality incoming links, most from comment spam and most of those from pornography sites. Google is really penalising this kind of thing nowdays.
Client: … I need to have a word with my SEO company…
As a wise man once said, there’s nothing more exhilarating than pointing out the shortcomings of others.