| |
| |
|
SEO Articles |
|
|
|
The Biggest SEO Scam of All
While there are many ethical SEO firms serving Internet users today, a few notorious practitioners also exist. One of them called me just the other day. "We can get your site to be number one in the search engines for the top 20 search terms you choose," promised the telemarketer. I don't usually give telemarketers the time of day, but somehow found this fellow to be intriguing. It was a cold and snowy day in Michigan right at the moment, and somehow I felt warmer just hearing him glow about the sunshine beaming through his own office windows. "Show me results," I requested. So we cruised the web together, and he showed me some client sites that really did have top rankings. At first glance the sales spiel sounded rather inviting, but after taking some time to consider and evaluate his company, I determined that what this friendly young salesman offered was nothing more than a scam. As I did my homework, several red flags jumped out at me. By researching his company on the Internet, I learned that they employed no less than 250 telemarketers soliciting SEO clients on a continual basis. With all due respect to the size of this company, I found it hard to believe that they could service the numerous SEO clients they were recruiting in a very meaningful way. I asked the salesman about this the next time he called. He informed me that their SEO service was highly automated, built on proprietary technology that was so ahead of its time that no other firm could compete. In case you didn't catch it, the previous sentence contained red flag #2. In the words of the old adage, "if it sounds too good to be true, it probably it." The above was only the tip of the iceberg, however. Upon further questioning of my enthusiastic sales contact, I learned that it wasn't really my url that they wanted to promote. Their plan was much more beneficial--for themselves, that is. They would set-up urls to be doorway pages to my website. Their urls, not mine, would be optimized to get high in the search engines. They would maintain control of and ownership of the urls, so if I ever went out of business, they could sell all that traffic-and value I had paid so dearly for-to one of my competitors. Pretty nice deal for them. I pay them big bucks on an annual basis to drive traffic to a url which they-not me--own. Of course, I would benefit from whatever sales came through their url as long as I continued to ante up cash. I had a good friend who fell prey to this scheme a few years back. An unscrupulous SEO "specialist" talked her into paying big bucks for a website with a url which the SEO firm owned and controlled. The SEO firm then billed my friend much more than they had originally contracted for. When she balked at the bill, they threatened to shut down traffic to the site. While this firm also promised hordes of traffic and top search engine listings, the only significant traffic my friend ever got was garnered through pay-per-click. To make matters worse, the SEO firm hid links to their sites throughout the html of her website. Another fault I found with the SEO firm mentioned first in this article was the search terms they crowed about taking first place for. To say the least, they were rather obscure. It's a pretty impressive accomplishment to come up first on the web for the search term "furniture" or even "log furniture". But if you design a page that brings up your company first on Google for a search of "Birmingham Tuscaloosa Avenue Dry Cleaners", big deal. And that's what this SEO firm was doing. Although I never seriously considered dropping $3000 or whatever it was for their services, the final clincher came when I asked what type of traffic I could expect for digging into my pockets. "I can get you an average of 100 hits per day," he told me. Then he showed me stats on some of their clients sites that had, over the course of a year, built up to 100 hits per day. I don't know about you, but I want a lot more than 100 unique hits per day on my website. I've achieved those kinds of numbers-and better-by myself. Why should I pay them for what I consider to be mediocre results? Don't get me wrong. I do believe in SEO firms, and because of the success I've been having on some of my top search terms, may engage in that business myself someday. But after researching the issues carefully, I would warn fellow webmasters to beware of any SEO firm that: ? employs a boiler room full of telemarketers ? automates most or all of their services ? insists on gaining and retaining control of the url to be promoted ? focuses on lengthy and obscure search strings ? touts sites that are garnering a mere 100 hits per day as examples of their success. Of all the bad practices mentioned above, the one I found most offensive was the idea that the SEO firm should own or control my url. While owning the url would seem like a good idea for the SEO firm (they could always collect their fees by threatening to shut down the site), it isn't so nifty for the client. If I pay a firm to build my business, I want them to do just that-build my business. To pay a firm to build traffic to a url they own is really like paying them to build their business-and that, in my opinion, is the biggest SEO scam of all. Copyright 2005 Log Cabin Rustics Cari Haus has been successfully selling rustic log furniture and beds on the Internet since 1997. Copyright 2005 by Cari Haus, website http://www.logcabinrustics.com/. Permission is granted to reprint this article, either online or in written publications, as long as the copyright information, this paragraph, and a link address or a link to the Log Cabin Rustics website is attached at the end of the article.
MORE RESOURCES:
SEO - Google News |
|
|
|
RELATED ARTICLES
Agressive Linking Strategies Help To Get Your Site Noticed A good link building strategy has become an essential part of search engine marketing and positioning. It has been the topic of many web conferences around the world for quite some time now. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Strategy - Navigating the Dark Waters of Website Promotion Creating a well-designed website is the first step in your internet marketing strategy that must be backed up with techniques designed to drive traffic to the website for successful, long-term results. You wouldn't consider opening a retail store in a major shopping mall without signage and you shouldn't consider having a nice looking website designed without expanding your web presence in order to be found on the internet. 10 Ways to Make Sure Your SEO Goes Out of Its Way for You If they want to have success, companies should do everything they can to ensure that their SEO firm doesn't provide lousy service. Here are 10 tips to keep in mind:1. How You Can Easily Compile A Gigantic Keyword List It doesn't matter what kind of marketing you are involved in.Having the most keywords for your market or niche is a surefire way to win over your competition, and that's a fact!The most important place to have thousands of keywords is in your pay-per-click campaigns, as you want to hit as broad an audience as possible, within your market or niche. Ten Steps To A Well Optimized Website - Step 4: Content Optimization Welcome to part four in this search engine positioning series. Last week we discussed the importance of the structure of your website and the best practices for creating an easily spidered and easily read site. Advanced Uses for the Google Algorithm Previously.. Part I : Getting Free Hits Using These Simple Tips & Tricks Search Engine OptimizationSearch engines still remain the #1 tool to generate free targeted traffic to any website, so make sure that your site is indexed in every major search engine. Do a through check of all the meta tags and make sure you are not missing any one. Meta Tags - An Important Part of Every Web Page Meta tags are an absolute must from a search engine optimisation perspective, there are many mistakes that can be made by not including these or even trying to 'spam' the SE's using them so heres a quick summary of the three main ones:Meta Page Title TagThe title tag is supported by all search engines and should be considered as the most important element in your optimisation process. Why is this you may ask? Well the page title is the first thing search engine spiders and human visitors will see. Search Engine Optimization Techniques Search engine optimization is the process of increasing the amount of visitors to a website by achieving a high ranking in the search results of a search engine (i.e. MLM and SEO - Bad Business! No Business! MLM has been around way before the Internet. It is a few steps above a chain letter. 2 Powerful Ways To Capitalize on Your Search Engine Traffic Many marketers know that search engine marketing is among one of the best methods to get visitors to their websites. It's a profitable way to reach new subscribers and new customers. Search Engine Robots - How They Work, What They Do (Part I) Automated search engine robots, sometimes called "spiders" or "crawlers", are the seekers of web pages. How do they work? What is it they really do? Why are they important?You'd think with all the fuss about indexing web pages to add to search engine databases, that robots would be great and powerful beings. Are You Losing The Battle For Search Engine Traffic? Search engine traffic should be a priority for any online business and some level of optimization is apart of every effective marketing strategy.On the plus side, search engine traffic is the cream of the crop. Offpage Optimization: Does Article Marketing Cut the Mustard? For those who haven't heard: article marketing is the new offpage optimization strategy that works like magic and won't cost you a dime. What's the strategy? You create an arsenal of short, well-written keyword articles aimed at your target customer and include your URL at the bottom. The Need of Popularity In very simple words, the link popularity of your site means the amount of links coming to you from another sites. Every major search engine heavily weighs the link popularity of sites when ranking sites. Meta Tags Help Optimize Your Web Site Rankings Are you working on getting your web site up onto the internet?There are a few different elements you need to think about when first putting up your new web site. Starting with the basics and building from there is the best way to go. What In The World Is This Google Sandbox Theory Thing? And How Do I Beat It? Ok, so over the past month or so I've been collecting various search engine optimization questions from all of you. Today, I'm going to answer what was the most frequently asked question over the past month. Search Engine Optimization and Web Site Usability Build a Web site and the people will come.Ha! If it were only that easy! The Web is the one sales environment where the customer has total empowerment. Driving Your Website through Google Sandbox What is Google Sandbox?Google Sandbox is applied on new websites, it determines the timing of site inclusion as well as ranking in Google search engine results (SERPS). This process could take up to 6-8 months, which could be against your plans causing frustration to webmasters. Search Engine Optimization and Submission Tips Bringing visitors to your site from the main Search engines is more of a process than one event. The first step is to make sure your webpages are'Search Engine friendly'.
|
| Home | Sitemap | Forums | Contact Us | Advertise |
| © 2006 SEO Articles. A Real Web Talk Presentation. Network Sites : Index Rated Directory | SEO Care Directory | Humour Inc. | Free Mobile Ringtones | A1hosts | SEO Blog the four required words |
