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Beware this SEO Consultant
If the SEO consultant you are interviewing mentions any of the
following items, do not hire them or give them one single
dime of your hard earned money. A reputable SEO consultant would
not suggest any of the following topics:
~Guarantee #1 ranking on Google
(or even the top 10): This is completely impossible to guarantee!
~ The technique employed to raise your ranking is a company
secret:
If you do not understand something ASK questions. You are
responsible for the actions of any companies you hire, so it's best
to be sure you know exactly how they intend to "help" you. If they
use a technique not allowed by the search engines, your site could
be banned.
~ Place a link on your site to the SEO: You should never have
to link to an SEO or place any other links on your page that may be
a link popularity scheme. This type of scheme could plunge your site
to the bottom of the rankings of search engines.
~ Pay-per-Click results are combined with web search results:
Some SEO consultants help their clients with pay-for-inclusion
programs and ad word programs. This is fine as long as you receive
two reports. One report should show how your site is doing in
actual search engine results, while the other report should show the
pay-per-click results. An unethical SEO consultant may make a report
that looks better than it is by including both searches into one
report.
~ Optimizes for obscure keyword phrases:
If the keyword is long or obscure you would be ranked number one
anyway, so why pay someone. Do the keywords make sense to you? Are
they words you would enter for a search of your product or service?
If any of the above things have happened to you, take a stand and
report them to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) who handles
complaints about deceptive or unfair business practices.
Visit:
http://www.ftc.gov/
and click on "File a Complaint Online," call 1-877-FTC-HELP, or
write to:
Federal Trade Commission
CRC-240
Washington, D.C. 20580
Dangers to Avoid
When
interviewing an SEO consultant, be sure that they are not going to
use unethical techniques and tricks to boost your website high up in
the rankings. They may actually succeed, but once discovered your
site will be pulled from the rankings and banned from the search
engine. Going the distance with an SEO consultant who is ethical and
helps you gain a higher ranking will ensure that your site is stays
on top and the traffic driven to your site will want to purchase
your goods or service.
These are some of the techniques and tricks that search engine
consider SPAM:
~
Doorway Pages:
Doorway pages are web pages designed and built specifically to draw
search engine visitors to your website. They are standalone pages
designed only to act as doorways to your site. Doorway pages are a
very bad idea for several reasons, though many
SEO firms use them
routinely.
If you can't reach the page by following the site navigation, then
it is a doorway page. The page appears in the search results, but is
not the actual website. A doorway page is no more than a one-page
click-through advertisement for a website. When you are searching
for a specific item or service, you don't want to visit a one-page
click-through advertisement for a website. You want to visit
the website.
Doorway pages do not do a very good job of generating viable
traffic, even when they are done by "experts." Many users simply hit
their back buttons when presented with a doorway page.
Unfortunately, many SEO
firms count those first visits and report them to their clients as
successes.
Google and AltaVista do not like doorway pages and could drop you
from the index.
~ Cloaking and False Directs:
A
technique used by some web sites to deliver one page to a search
engine for indexing while serving an entirely different page to
everyone else. The page directed at the search engine is optimized
perfectly for the spiders; however a human would have difficulty
reading that page. A separate page is pulled up when a web surfer
wants to access the page. Search engines like Google, Lycos,
Hotbot and Excite ban cloaked web sites.
~ Keyword Stuffing:
Keyword Stuffing involves the repeated use of a word or phrase in an
attempt to increase a page's relevancy. For example, one might place
the following at the bottom of a page:
sports equipment sports equipment sports equipment
sports equipment sports equipment sports equipment
sports equipment sports equipment sports equipment
sports equipment sports equipment sports equipment
sports equipment sports equipment sports equipment
Most search engines are wise to keyword stuffing. They can analyze a
page to determine if the frequency of a word seems out of proportion
to normal, "relevant" documents.
Google and Yahoo both ban sites that use keyword stuffing.
~Hidden Text and Links:
The technique of inserting repetitive keywords on the page, usually
at the bottom and setting the color of the text that same as the
background color. These words cannot be seen by the person reading
the web page.
Tiny text is also considered spamming. Some search engines may not
index pages that use a lot of tiny text that most people would be
unable to read. Use of these techniques could result in a website
receiving a low ranking or being banned. |