SEO is one of the hottest terms in the modern marketing arena, and it’s expected to be for the foreseeable future. While SEO is something all businesses should be taking advantage of, like anything that gets popular, there are going to be scammers out there who poison the market. Falling for their tricks will only serve to hurt your brand, so here are a few of the most common ones to look out for…
Guaranteed Rankings/Results in 48 Hours
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Guaranteed results are one of the most popular hooks that SEO companies use in their marketing materials these days. Many will specify a first-page ranking, or tell you that you’re certain to make your money back. However, a lot of entrepreneurs don’t realise that, outside of PPC advertising, there’s no real way to guarantee a certain result for a certain amount of money. Google even has an entire section of their site dedicated to educating business owners on this fact. The second thing you need to realise is that all SEO takes time. Creating quality content, the manual submission to local search engines, thorough research and so on are all necessary to get any decent results. If the time constraints an SEO firm boasts sound too good to be true, they probably are!
Special Insight into Google’s Algorithm
This is another common hook that’s found in the opening sentence of a lot of ads. Don’t believe everything you read! The truth of the matter is that Google shares very little clear-cut information as to how their algorithm works, and very vague tips as to how to improve a website’s ranking. This is all part of their quest to separate poor quality content from the stuff their users are actually searching for. There’s no such thing as an SEO company that has any kind of “special insight” into the engineering behind Google’s algorithm, and such claims are often used by SEO fraudsters, which services like SEOClerks dedicate their time to stomping out. Google will always put their users before anything else. While leaks might happen every once in a while, their algorithm is a trade secret, and the company would never knowingly give out tips on how to exploit the search engine.
Submission to Thousands of Search Engines
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This is a very common add-on for the services of many web hosting companies, and often wrapped up in the most basic packages of small SEO companies. While it may be true that they’ll get your website on a range of search engines, this isn’t really something you should be looking for. Google, Bing and Yahoo account for roughly 90% of all search activity on the internet. Unless it’s a popular local directory, having your website submitted to and indexed on thousands of search engines isn’t a big deal, so don’t treat it like one. In general, you shouldn’t pay extra for submission in general. You can sign up to Webmaster services from Google, Bing and Yahoo easily, with very little strain to your precious time!
