Funny SEO Horror Stories

[keyserholiday]

In honor of Halloween, I thought it would be fun if we posted some SEO horror stories. Please don't name and shame clients, companies, or coworkers by name. Please see my example:
I worked for a marketing agency that handled the marketing for a nationwide franchise. I was in my hotel room in Las Vegas when one of our franchisees was complaining about a drop in leads and phone calls. I had the news on and there is a reporter standing in water above his ankles. The area had just been hit by a hurricane.

 

[Justin Mosebach]

Did an audit for a new client who had recently launched a website.

The entire site was set to noindex.

 

[CarrieHill]

I had a client that was a bed and breakfast - whenever you moved your mouse over any of their web pages, a stream of flowers would appear and follow it around like chemtrails.....

Had another client who hired an internal marketing person - they emailed me and asked me for the header of the website in a .jpg because they wanted to get it blown up into a billboard for the interstate nearby...

Had a client delete the redirect plugin (with A LOT of redirects in it) because they thought I installed it to redirect all their website traffic to a competitor

 

[ErinJones]

Had a client that didn't have internet access at their remote property. We had to print and mail design changes to them. They would add edits and mail back.
Don't take your wifi for granted, kids!


Another B&B client (heyyy, Carrie!) was near a Civil War battlefield and had cannons that shot across the screen, set to sound effects. Gunfire, just what you want to hear while booking a romantic getaway...

 

[ErinJones]

I had an employer at an agency tell me (at my work baby shower) it would be okay if my baby wasn't super smart, because the smartest kids usually end up doing drugs.
(I don't know, none of this makes sense to me either)

 

[JS Girard]

We have salespeople that handle customer relations. This means a lot of things can be chinese-whisper-ish sometimes.

Last summer I send an email to one of them that the client has removed our access form the GBP. He answers me, so I assume he's going to handle it. Two months later I get an email asking why the client is no longer in the threepack and that the page is apparently suspended or something.

Another client (realtor verified to his agency office) was consistently top-5 for his cash keywords. But we couldn't show the address because instant filtering. Three times in a row the address got put on the GBP and all three times I had the salesguy rush to me in a panic about all the rankings as if I hadn't told him three times before that the client would never rank as long as the address was visible.

(yeah, we have a bunch of salespeople who don,t understand the first thing about what the SEO department actually does. I know it's a terrible concept, but for now it's raking in the money, so there's no way the higher up will change it)

 

[keyserholiday]

I had just started at an agency. The SEO manager decided to do keyword research without seeing the client's website. We had the onboard call with the client and he was spouting off the great keywords we will target. He picked an item that they didn't sell. I mentioned after the call that I had looked at the website prior to the call and he bugged out and said, "you did"?