Rarely will a month go by where one of my clients forwards me some “SEO Service Guaranteed!” email and ask if this is a good deal (usually its a forwarded email with lots of pretty bullets) or if I heard of so and so company to help them with an aggressive search engine strategy. I then ask my client what exactly do this company do and what are they charging you. Its usually the same set of services offered; inject your site into 500+/- search engines and directories (498 of which they never heard of), place your link on another 50 web sites (which Google frowns upon, sometimes automatically removing you from their searches), and somehow get you ranked on page 1 for any keyword you want. I generally advise my clients to ask these companies to get a website URL they worked on and a keyword they optimized them for. If you can type in that keyword and see their client site on page one, lets talk. Think about it… someone will charge you $100 a month for a service and you generate thousands in revenue? Too good to be true…
Fake Directories and Fake Search Engines…
There are search engine sites and directories out there made for the specific purpose of having paid SEO Services site owners get their URLs listed on; as long as you pay that monthly service fee and you will be listed. They don’t amount to anything and Google, Bing and other main search engines understand how the game is played and what to avoid. Just because you get listed in these sites doesn’t mean you will perform well or that your potential consumers actually look at these sites. If a search engine recognizes that the same set of URLs is listed on numerous directory sites, and they notice that the turn over is high in those directory sites, they will simply ignore them and can even ban your own web site because they consider this to be a deceptive method of link reciprocity.
Where Are You Added?
Be very careful when SEO firms tell you that they will add your URL to other sites. At times this involves having a hidden orphan page on other sites that’s a single page directory of URLs that other owners are paying for. It does absolutely nothing for you and some SEO firms might even place one of these link-list pages on your site without you even knowing it. Once again the main search engines consider this to be deceptive and will either ignore this page or can red flag you for it.
Scams cost money and often can get you red listed in the main search engines. If you need someone to do your marketing, chose wisely and if the deal sounds too good to be true, move on. Always ask for proof; give me a URL name and a keyword you optimized them for, plug it in and see if you see them on the first page. Feel free to contact me if you’d like to talk a little more about SEO services.
