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Avoid These SEO Scams

Following on from my recent article on Ranking versus Traffic versus Sales Conversion, if anyone you are talking to about SEO sounds like this, you need to run in the other direction.

Following on from my recent article on Ranking versus Traffic versus Sales Conversion, if anyone you are talking to about SEO sounds like this, you need to run in the other direction. More info here https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/35291?hl=en

Beware the false promises: Reserve the same skepticism for unsolicited email about search engine optimisation as you do for diet pills or requests to help transfer funds from some Nigerian prince who needs help claiming his dead father’s fortune. No-one can guarantee a Number 1 ranking in Google. There is no “priority submit” for Google. Google “SEO Fraud” or “SEO scams” – but as always, if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

Beware the “black hat”: Beware the SEO firms promising to get you on the home page for your favourite search terms. There is the right way to do it and the wrong way to do it. Things like hiding keywords in your site; submitting to link farms and the like are called “black hat SEO”. Do it the wrong way and get caught and Google will blacklist your domain name and you will have a long and arduous fight on your hands to explain your way into getting your site relisted. This is disastrous for any business.

Beware the illusionists: There are also many ways to “prove” to you your site is working for a particular search phrase, but have you considered: is anyone actually searching for that phrase?; what methods have they used to achieve that high ranking eg they may be able to show you the phrase ranking well, but the link you are given is specifically altered to show the results a person in a completely different geographical location would see; using certain SEO methods may gain you short-term spikes in rankings but these do not last. Be careful paying for results based on these short-term rankings.

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