5 SEO Scams

With continued economic uncertainty, we are still seeing alot of very unscrupulous people jumping into the “SEO Arena”. Every person who has lost a job seems to becoming SEO experts at the expense of clients. SEO, or Organic Search Engine Optimization is a skill that takes years to learn and do well and takes continued training and persistence to do well. Above all, it takes alot of time on behalf of the SEO vendor to do it right and maintain and improve your organic position. Here are some of the things that we see happening in the marketplace that we see as dubious at best.

“We have the inside track to Google”

If someone calls you and says they have the secret algorithm for Google, run, and run fast. No one really knows the algorithms that any of the search engines use.  Search engines are naturally coy about giving out any information on how they search.  They want to provide the most honest and best search results for you, the customer.  So, anyone who says they “know Google’s secret is flat out lying.

I searched your company and you didn’t show up

We see this all the time. Unscrupulous SEO companies will pick any random phrase related to your business and say you don’t show up. This may be true, what they don’t tell you is that this phrase is so broad that no one is searching on it organically. You need to do the proper key word research to determine the phrases that will actually drive traffic.  Only a reputable SEO firm will do this for clients.

I can get you #1 Ranking

True, you can get # ranking by optimizing for terms and phrases that are very narrow or have no competition. For example, if I optimized for “Car companies in New Hampshire” this is a relatively easy thing to do since this is a term that has little competition and few searches. Focus on key words and phrases that have a fair number of searches and low competition.

I will add hundreds of links to your site

Links both in and outbound matter, but what matters more is quality links. Don’t get links just to add links.

Meta tags don’t matter

Although meta tags have less importance than they used to, they do matter so find a firm that can develop and deploy these ethically and in a cost-effective manner.