In yesterday’s Hangout with Eric Enge and Mark Traphagen, Gary Illyes from Google commented that when he looked at Penguin affected sites, he saw that they were actually the result of bad SEOs.  He then talked about how site owners don’t need to hire an SEO but that if they do, they need to be careful about choosing one.

And this just goes back to there are things that as a site owner or a content owner that you can do without an SEO.  I don’t say drop all SEOs, because SEOs can do also magic.

I know some of the sites that you’re working with and, for example, I know that they are doing amazing. Or there’s also Bruce Clay for example that has a great team.  There are SEO companies that are really good.

But you have to be careful about how you choose your SEO team.  And look at what they did in the past.  Talk to the other clients perhaps, but you have to make a way to make sure the people that you are letting touch your website that they know what they are doing.

This is something that many have been talking about for years, but still many site owners fall victim to “fly by night SEOs” or bad ones that will go and throw a ton of low quality links at a site for some immediate results but are long gone when the site is penalized.

Google also has their “Do you need an SEO?” which also has a lot of details about why a site owner might need an SEO and what they should look for.