Unfortunately, there are a growing number of bad SEO companies and SEO scams that prey upon naive site owners. Before you consult with an SEO company protect yourself from falling prey to an SEO scam artist and educate yourself first.
- Who Owns the Copyrights to SEO and Meta Tags?
- 12 Warnings Signs of a Bad SEO Company
- Be an Educated SEO Consumer and Outsmart SEO Scam Artists
- How to Avoid Being Taken by SEO Scams and Bad SEO Companies
7 Steps To Avoid an SEO Scam
1) seek an SEO specialist in your industry niche
2) ask the person or company for references
3) request to see examples of their work
4) establish goals and a campaign strategy to get there
5) require keyword benchmark positions to gauge progress
6) expect a flat-rate fee or one with a monthly payment option
7) insist on a performance guarantee and only pay once goals are reached
John Barremore
Houston, TX
John,
This is great advice for business women! I especially think keyword benchmarks are important. No one can (or should) promise top ranking on every site in a short time (great SEO is built on great content) and benchmarks are a reasonable way to show progress and improvement.
I visited your website and would like to point out some other things (from your site) that are good indications of a reputable SEO provider:
The Visible Dentist offers affordable payments, upfront pricing, and benchmarks. They also offer risk-free SEO and do something every SEO expert should take advantage of: in addition to going after major keyword phrases, the Visible Dentist also sees the (real) value in cultivating less competitive keywords, too.
Thanks again for a great list of tips!
Lahle Wolfe
Guide to Women in Business
Does the court prosecute SEO scammers?
Google has come down hard on some SEO companies that use blackhat techniques and in 2008, FindLaw. Matt Cutts always seems very interested to hear about SEO companies trying to game Google. In 2005, the State of Washington filed suit against an SEO company that wen by several names: Visible.net, Captures.com and WebMarketingSource.com.
AdwordBanners.com is a SCAM! I was guaranteed 1000 hits per purchased keyword within the first week of service. In one week we’ve received only 22 hits! That’s less than 2% of our incoming traffic! Also, the banners will only run on older versions of Internet Explorer – I was using IE8 (which it did not work on), and used the IE “upgrade” on their website which installed IE7; that doesn’t make any sense. I have called Richard Stevens (866-370-8724) and emailed (richard@adwordbanners.com; richard@netphrases.com; info@netphrases.com) multiple times with my complaints and have never heard back from him.
Beware adwordbanners.com!!!
Sounds like your experience was not at all positive and that you tried to resolve things to no avail. Thanks for sharing your thoughts and cautioning others to be wary!
Great article and great comments. I would add that every business owner should become well-versed on avoiding scams in all their forms. I am the author of The Little Book of Scams: Swindling for Fun and Profit and have noticed that while the web provides ease and anonymity for SEO and other type of web-based scams, the psychological tactics they use are “time honored” and have been successfully used for centuries.
Do you have a link to your book that you can share? I am sure my readers would love to hear more!
We held a funeral for S.E.O. (Overrated) this week at http://www.e-terran.com. Good luck trying to understand Google. Remember the more we stay confused the more money Google makes. No more, from us. Our clients enjoy tracking Phone Calls to their business and no longer have the frustrations of trying to figure out hits to the website. The proof is in the pudding, log on to http://www.e-terran.com and click on the “Success Stories” link to view our results. The best part, we don’t have to touch your site!!
TRACK CALLS, NOT HITS!!!!