28
Jul
Beware of the SEO Scammers
Top ways to trick you into
buying bad SEO services
Over the years bad SEO practices have been brought in by
scammers to prey on the uneducated and tricking them into shedding
out huge sums of money for no real benefit. I thought it would be a
good idea to at least educate you on how these Scammers work, what
they will be promising you and why what they are promising makes it
obvious that they aren’t the real thing!
1. Promising you position 1 on Google for any chosen
keyword
This one is easy to fall for as this is what everyone wants from
a SEO Specialist but in reality SEO doesn’t work that way.
Google ranking is impossible to promise as it is a forever changing
thing and there is no way of guaranteeing a single page let alone a
single position.
A good SEO specialist will show you a portfolio of their clients
and how they have improved their client’s rankings within
Google. Showing potential clients that you have the experience to
achieve good ranking is about as much as a promise as you can
really give.
2. Saying they will submit your website to thousand of Search
Engines
Sounds impressive doesn’t it, surely that would take
months of hard work to submit your website to that many Search
Engines...
Now think about this sensibly, how many search engines do you
use? Well let’s look at the stats, 92% of UK internet users
use Google for all their searches. Bing and Yahoo take up pretty
much the remaining 8%. Do you really need to be submitted to
thousands of Search Engines, can you even think of over 10 Search
Engines...
And these days with most good Search Engines you don’t
even need to submit your website to them, fair enough it may take
the Search Engine a little longer to find you but if your website
has been built well they will be able to find you
automatically.
3. Saying they can get you on page 1 of Google within 24
hours
If you are using a Pay-per-click advert this is very possible,
anybody can get on page one of Google pretty much instantly and you
definitely don’t need to hire someone to do it.
All you have to do is Sign Up to Adwords, pick a few keywords
and then PAY! But organic search works completely differently and
if they promise you will show up on the organic search within hours
then they are simply scammers.
If you make a change on your website, Google might not even see
that its change for a couple of days, maybe even weeks if you
don’t regularly change your content on your website.
How can they guarantee page 1 in any time scale when they
don’t control Google.
4. That they are working with Google or that they have a inside
man at Google
Of course this would be very cool but seriously you think Google
employees would be selling inside SEO secrets to SEO Consultants...
Google is a multi-billion dollar organisation not the ideal
candidate to try and double cross. I also couldn’t think of
any employee trying to double cross the company that gives them
free breakfast, lunch and dinner, as well as snacks, drinks and all
sorts of other cool benefits.
And even if they did, Google’s algorithm reportedly
contains over 200 variables. You could get handed the formula to
Google’s algorithm and it would still be near enough
impossible to crack the code even if you were some kind of super
mathematician.
5. Saying they can give you hundreds of links for a small sum
of money
Link building is obviously one of the key factors in SEO but
also one of the hardest factors to do. Being able to buy them
sounds a lot easier then going out and trying to get them yourself
so why not?
Well do you think Google want you to be able to achieve high
ranking this easily?
Of course they don’t, buying links is seen as cheating and
is something that is forbidden by Google and Google have been known
to ban websites for buying links.
6. Advising about Meta Tags
Anyone that knows anything about Search
Engine Optimisation knows that Meta Tags don’t carry any
weight whatsoever for SEO anymore. Meta Tags haven’t been
used for a couple of years now due to spammers trying to cheat the
system.
7. Promising to improve Page Rank
Another thing knows one has control over, you can suggest ways
to try and improve it but you can’t guarantee if it will.
Page Ranking is very difficult to improve and comes naturally as
the website ages and gains respect.
It also doesn’t carry much weight anymore so you
shouldn’t get too hung up on it.
8. If they are suggesting “Black Hat” SEO
Black Hat is a term we use for BAD SEO practicing. Mostly used
by scammers and spammers, it is the easiest way to rank well on
Google but also the easiest way to get banned from Google. Search
Engines might not pick up on this immediately so you may see
yourself getting good results but it wont take them long to
discover what you are doing and banned your website.
Here are some common
black hat strategies you really should stay away from.
By Luke
Stanley
SEO Consultant
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