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