Hey folks it’s me again Mark Felix with an edition of how to spot scam Search Engine Optimization agencies/companies or individuals who guarantee you top ranking in the search engines. Don’t Fall For It………
Over the past few years I’ve notice an increase of so call experts trying to get my attention and maybe yours with promises that they can get your site ranked on the first page of Google search engine and even increase your PR (page rank) over night, Really?
Well I’ve got here a few simple things you can do to spot them, but before we get into it let me just say this, it amazes me how even big companies fall for the scam, a good sales pitch with an eye catching website and off they go.
Recently, I was looking for an SEO project to work on and came across a site that seem to offer the type of work I would love to get involve with. Most of their projects seem to be around the travel industry and travel is actually my background, it’s where it all started.
Having looked at the website of this company it did cross my mind that as far as SEO goes they don’t seem to have it all together. However, the sales pitch on the site would have you reaching for your cheque book and so I proceeded to send a few details of myself and simply wait for a response.
And Then It Came………..
The first request was for me to send a detail list of my work, that was not a problem at all because for the past 5 years I’ve been involve in one way or another in SEO.
The second request was for me to give a detail list of things I would do to get the sites that was sent to me up and running as soon as possible. One of the links that was sent was from a company called Expotel.
Now I know Expotel back in my hotel days and whether or not the SEO Company had gotten a contract to work on the Expotel site I don’t know, but I was surprise to see the link sent to me and as I mentioned earlier, the travel projects would suite me nicely.
There were several requests from the SEO Company about my on page and off page techniques which I found very odd but provided as much information as I could. Then came the money part of the deal and what a good compensation would have been for the work provided.
I’ve Never Heard from the Company since…………..
OK, so let’s get down to five things you can look for if you decide to use a company or someone to work on your business site.
1. Where do they rank for their main keywords!
2. What sort of traffic does their site get
3. What is the PR (page rank) of the site
4. Verify the testimonies on the site
5. Search for comments or articles written about the company/agency
So in detail and as a case study let’s look at (simplystep.co.uk)
Go to the site and right click on the page, then go to the View Page Source, if you look between the Title, Description and Keywords you might get an idea of what the main keywords are and in this case it seems to be (Web Design York)
Low and behold the site does not even rank for a phrase that has “About 32,100 results” now if you’re a little more adapt and have a few plug-ins on your browser you can even do a deeper analysis of the site, on second thought if you know this much you can do your own SEO.
Traffic: what sort of traffic does the site get, well you can do a quick search on Alexa and it will tell you quite a few things about the site, even the keywords that the site might be ranking high for, and here they are.
Web design York, web design, York web design, website design York, web design in York, website design Medium, web designer jobs.
Do you know that the site does not have a top ten for any of these phrases?
Testimonies: while looking for a testimony that can tell you something about the company, pay attention to the claims.
One claim was that they got this company (Premier Measurements) top ten position for the key phrase “noise mapping surveys” “noise assessment surveys“ and “acoustic consultancy” now please do me a favour and check these claims for yourself. 72 sites are competing for the first one, 824 for the second and 184,000 for the third.
This friend is nothing to shout about…………
Well, by now you would have gotten my drift and realise that not all that glitter is actually gold, please note that I am not here to knock down companies that are trying to make a living but rather trying to educate folks who allow themselves to be taken by these companies.
One other thing to look out for are these people who send you emails about SEO, the first thing to look for is the email address. Can you imagine someone wanting to get me top ten search results but send me an email with a Google account? or hotmail account?
Its’ funny but they do it all the time.
Well to make a very long story short, if you’re going to use a company’s service, make sure you do a thorough check on these guys before giving out your money.
There are genuine companies/individuals out there that can get you good results for your website, but you need to do as much research as you can before you start giving your money away.
Actually I might offer my services at a reasonable price, how about that?
Mark Felix: Owner of the Travelrobe group of travel sites in the UK. The Main site is www.travelrobe.com
www.airportessentials.com is an Airport Parking, Airport Hotel & Airport Lounge site in the UK
Mark also writes press releases and articles on travel. Part of Mark's daily activities include building and promoting niche blogs on various products i.e. Health, Wealth, SEO and Finance.
