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Avoiding SEO Scams
Has anyone ever telephoned you and said "My name is John and I'm ringing on behalf of Google (or Yahoo)"? They have called us (!). For a start, Google and Yahoo do not employ people to cold-call businesses on their behalf. Do you think Google need a team of people to do cold calling in order to sell SEO services? Of course they don't. You can't buy SEO services from Google or Yahoo anyway! So everything that person says after that statement is worthless. They are trying to give themselves credibility by mentioning one of the two biggest search engines and hoping that your ears prick up so that you'll listen to the complete clap-trap they're about to tell you.
Unfortunately, the SEO market is littered, almost to a point of saturation it seems with these slippery characters, so here's how to spot an SEO scammer.
"We'd Like To Get You To The Top of Google"
If you haven't had the phone call mentioned earlier, you've almost certainly had one of these emails saying they've visited your website and they can get you to "the top of Google". Well, first of all, you don't want to put your trust in someone who is spamming everybody in the world with their badly phrased and misspelled emails. And secondly, they don't usually have a website, don't have a proper domain name (the emails are usually from a free gmail or yahoo account), and don't provide any contact details.
"2,000 Quality Links for £50"
Or something similar. Every link back to your website needs to be appropriately optimised and point to relevant content. Not only that but your links need to be placed on quality websites, not sites which have a bad reputation and a poor ranking. So how can they possibly achive this for 2,000 links without knowing your keyphrases and for £50? They can't of course. They'll take your £50 and if they actually do create any links, they'll be on dodgy websites which will be detrimental to your rankings.
"Join Our Link Exchange Programme"
Whilst a reciprocal link is better than no link, you have to be sure that the linked content is relevant and unique. The only way to do that is by manually checking each link before establishing it. I have seen so many cases of people joining these programmes and ending up with links to porn content and other dubious download sites. Avoid them like the plague.
The simple truth is that to get your site up in the top three for your chosen keyphrase (depending upon the popularity of that phrase) it is going to take a lot of time and effort from someone who knows what they're doing. You can do it yourself if you have the time (and a lot of it), it's just a case of learning what the search engines like to see, establishing your keyphrases and sticking to them, and creating lots of UNIQUE and relevant content on your website and on other websites (don't just copy stuff from somewhere else, it doesn't work!).
Avoiding SEO Scams - Things To Remember
1. Don't go with a cold-caller. Do your own research and look for proof of their previous work.
2. Find somebody reasonably local who's office you can drop in to and talk to somebody about your website face to face.
3. I'm not saying just go for the most expensive job you can find, but with SEO if it sounds too good to be true then it absolutely definitely is.
4. Keep in mind SEO is quite a significant investment in your business.. Thompson Holidays don't stay at number one for "holidays in majorca" by spending a few hundred pounds and forgetting about it. Remembering that should weed out those who are looking to sting you for a one-off £600.
Small businesses are easy prey for SEO scams. We hate scammers so much that we are happy to pass opinion on any approach or quote you have had - and no - it's not just to promote our own service, if we could support some kind of legislation or campaign to rid the world of these thieves we would do it today.
This article was written by Paul Clarke and is copyright Web Equip Ltd. If you want to use it please contact us. Please don't run the risk of using it without contacting us.
