1
Sep
Why fixed fees can be bad news?
Whatever type of advice you require, be it medical advice to
financial advice, you will always be expecting them to be a
qualified and experience professional.
But with Search
Engine Optimisation this isn’t the case. There is no
specific degree you have to take to become qualified, you
don’t need to take any courses or exam, you don’t even
really need much experience before you can start dispensing your
advice. All you need to know is more about SEO then the person
you’re selling it to and they will be none the wiser.
All they will need to do is mention a few search engines, make a
few promises like “you will be page 1 position one within a
month”, throw around some SEO terms like Meta Tags and
Pagerank and they will seem like a professional.
Now this is the main problem with the SEO industry, everyone
thinks they are a professional and few people actually know how to
execute it. It’s difficult to tell between the scam artist
and the real professionals and many Estate Agents do fall for these
scams all the time.
Yet this isn’t necessarily very hard to spot if you know
what you are looking for. Here are some things to help you spot the
scammers:
1. They will promise you a position
on Organic Search (e.g. Page one; position one for Estate Agents in
London on Google). Check through their portfolio to see which of
their clients are on page one!
2. The
SEO service will be a one off payment. SEO is an ongoing
service that you and the SEO consultant will be working on
continuously.
Most SEO experts will offer a monthly rate depending on the amount
of work that needs to be done on the website.
With a one of payment you are giving them the chance to take your
money and run.
3. With the one off payment you will
also be able to tell if they are a fraud if they haven’t
looked at your website in depth. If they haven’t done this
they won’t know how much work needs to be done and what your
websites strengths and weaknesses are. Also a competitor’s
analysis will have to be done for them to see how much work will
need to be done and how long it will take before you are likely to
see results.
For proof that they have looked into your website you can always
ask for a “Web Review” or a “SEO analysis”
of your website. Most experts will offer this free. For our free
web review click
here.
4. Giving specific time scales is a
near enough impossible thing to predict. Some competitor’s
websites might have very high authority in the eyes of Google which
will make it very difficult for you to start competing with
them.
On average it’s usually between 3-6 months before you start
seeing good results but if with high competition can take anywhere
up to a year.
If someone promises you will be on page one within a month, they
are most likely scamming you as no one has control over that.
5. Saying they work for or with
Google. Google don’t offer a Search Engine Optimisation
service and they also give away secret tips to certain companies.
They also can’t personally place a website in any position as
Google is run by an algorithm.
So think before you buy, don’t fall for their tricks and
remember there aren’t any short cuts in SEO.
By Luke Stanley
SEO Consultant
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