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I feel slightly better for having had my rant on so called search engine optimising companies sending out spurious crap by email. The real cause of the rant was not the email - that was merely the final straw that put me over the edge! I had a meeting with an excellent company who have been ripped off and almost lost their business! We can all say, 'Well, they should have checked, it's their responsibility as to who they hire...' But if you don’t know what you are looking for how can you check!
So I will try and make it easy for you to identify a con artist from the real deal!
There are MANY search engine optimisation techniques that can have a harmful effect on your site's rankings, some of which can potentially get you into a lot of trouble with the search engines!
So why take a chance?
AVOID AT ALL COSTS SEO COMPANIES THAT:
- Build "Doorway" Pages or “Micro Websites”
- They Build Two Versions!
- Create Useless Content
Doorway pages and micro websites are really frowned upon by the search engines, because they clog up the index with junk. It's just too easy to produce thousands of these pages that have a very high keyword density, but no real purpose, other than trying to build links and direct traffic to a single site.
More importantly, the search engines feel ripped off, too.
When customers and your competition start pointing this kind of fraud out to them, the search engines are pretty good at delisting the offending sites. Is a few weeks of increased traffic really worth the risk of getting booted off Google for good?!
I have seen where an SEO Company has built two versions of a site - one for the spiders is full of the kind of stuff the search engines like. The one that regular visitors see is full of the flashy, off-topic effects that look cool, but it isn't the relevant, content-rich site it's advertised as!
They use (spammy) redirects on your site. These redirects send visitors from a page they think they're going to (one that's been optimised for the search engines), to another one altogether.
This deceptive method has been overused, and the search engines no longer fall for it. It can get your site penalised or de-listed.
If the only content you've posted is just a few keywords repeated without any real substance, why would anyone bother coming back to read more?
This tactic can harm your reputation and your credibility... and once those are gone, it's almost impossible to get them back!
So...ask questions on how your prospective SEO consultant will achieve top listings. If they use any of these, kick them out the door or never engage them to look after what is your shopfront to the UK and beyond!
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