I fired a vendor today. It broke my heart.

This vendor was a referral, comfortable they got the gig. I talked about requirements, about my goals and priorities for the job. I talked - they did not listen. Then I called, explained that it needs to be done differently. They agreed and stayed their course, following their process, leading to their result, not mine.

I tried to make it work. Finally, I had to pull the plug.

The reaction was a complete surprise. They did not see it coming. "Why didn't you say something if it was not done correctly?" they exclaimed. Well, I did, several times. Don't blame me. How unprofessional. I know, you are trying to excuse that you did not listen. Don't.

Didn't I talk about expectations and things not done right? Haven't I mentioned what I need done and what is important to me? Nothing changed. No concerns addressed. And in the end - shock at the fact that they lost a customer. They did not have to.

I hung up the phone in disbelief. "It cannot be! Everybody knows these things - they are basic!" was the first thought that went through my mind. Next came righteous indignation, "They should not offer SEO services if they don't even understand the easy stuff! That is fraud!" And finally, the desire to save the world, "What about their clients? They are paying money for bad service and don't even know it."

Sounds familiar?

In a course of a conversation the other day, it became painfully clear to me that my fellow SEO has no clue about SEO. Even the things that are impossible to miss if you are in any way connected to SEO, were a big revelation. Should I start pointing fingers, shouting from street corners trying to warn unsuspecting clients?

Should I oust a fellow SEO?

NY Times broke a story about black hat SEO techniques that J.C. Penney employed to boost their rankings over the holiday season. For months, their pages were consistently ranking very high for not very relevant terms, like "home decor", "skinny jeans", "furniture", etc.

NY Times asked Doug Pierce from Blue Fountain Media to investigate the sudden ranking spike. The investigation uncovered that SearchDex - the SEO agency that J.C. Penney hired - used black hat SEO techniquest to boost the rankings for the holiday season. Simply put, they were buying links.

I have a theory on what actually happend. Here it is.

SEO Competitive Analysis on #seochat

Taylor Pratt (@RavenPratt) is the SEOChat guest. He is the Product Marketing Manager at Raven Tools. Read Taylor's Bio.

When you perform a competitive analysis for the first time, keep at it until you run out of backlinks. Revisit it once a quarter to see what they are focusing on and how much they have grown. Find out, if they have a new content strategy and what their favorite keyword is. Establish, what kind of link bait worked for them and what was not successful.

For not very competitive markets, usually not much changes. For more competitive niches, it is not only important to watch the mentioned changes, but pay attention to social paricipation. You will get insights on what your competition is currently doing. What is working for your competition? What can you make work for you? Most importantly, improve on it and take that top spot.

ICANN and Google made American English dominant on the internet, but there are still multilingual sites that need search engine optimization. David Leonhardt (@amabaie) joined #SEOChat to share tips on multilingual SEO. David has successfully run SEO campaigns in French, Spanish, German, and English. He also runs Canada's social bookmarketing website, zoomit.ca, The Happy Guy Marketing (seo-writer.ca) and freelance writers agency.

Here is what I learned about multilingual SEO on #SEOChat.