An unfortunate spat has unfolded between NYC-based SEO company MrSEO and Pandia, on account of this article: On outsourcing search engine optimization to India. Pandia is sponsored by eBrandz, as mentioned in the article, a point that seems to have provoked this unusual, generalised commentary on Indian SEO.

Writes Alan:

“If you want paraphrased, stolen content; spammy, outdated linkbuilding methods or cookie cutter solutions to your site’s unique problems, you’re probably better off with an SEO firm from India.”

I agree with Alan only up to a point and I would not generalise so strongly. In any country, including mine, there are many individuals who claim to be SEOs. Most of them appear to believe their own marketing collateral. I recently helped a travel website who had paid an Australian company for “SEO work” that included incorporating licensed content from Lonely Planet. Perfectly legal, perfectly rendered — and a perfect duplicate of the original text. Guess what? The travel site ranks nowhere for its desired keyphrases — no thanks to the so-called SEO who should have pointed out the fundamental flaw in that tactic.

SEO outsourcing is not the sole monopoly of India and if I examined, say, Egyptian or Russian SEO sites I am sure I could find something to criticise.

You can find bad SEOs in any country and the problem is exacerbated by the nature of the beast — there is no generally accepted measure of “good SEO” and there is relatively little authoritative training material. If you are going to the Webmasterworld conference in December, you might hear a thousand, overlapping opinions on what good SEO means. Incidentally, I am speaking about SEO101, sharing the podium with Bruce Clay and Bill Slawski.

Although there are many Indian English writers with impeccable writing skills, they are not in the SEO writing business. I know just one excellent India-based writer who is in the content writing game and there seem to be quite a few at Chilli Breeze, but the latter don’t come cheap. SEOs in general tend to have a web developer or web design background and have “picked up” SEO along the way.

I have outsourced some content writing and linking work to a few Indian SEO companies including eBrandz in Mumbai, whose offices I have visited. I know exactly what I need to be done, so I get quality work. Some of these companies manage the SEO and PPC work for major European and US companies and I can only assume that their clients are happy. Some of them work for US and Australian SEO companies, so many customers never know where some of the SEO work is done.

I believe that some US SEOs are pricing themselves out of the market — some “experts” charge US$500/hour — great if you can get it, but this could be driving some customers to seek cheaper options offshore. In my hands-on SEO days I picked up a lot of US and UK customers because Australian SEO pricing is in-between Indian and US/UK pricing and the time difference and language differences aren’t too severe.

Let’s see how this topic unfolds.

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