Someone told me today about a Search Engine Optimization (SEO) service he was using. Being the God knows what time I’ve heard about this type of SEO scams, I thought I’d write about it to prevent others from falling for it.
SEO is aimed at getting your website top ranking in the search engines, typically measured on Google Search. The assumption is that the higher your website appears in the search results, the more traffic it will get, the more sales or leads you will convert and the more dollars will make it into your pocket.
So shifty operators contact unsuspecting business owners or website owners and offer to get their websites a top search engine position at a surprisingly low cost. Sometimes, this cost seems even lower, but it must be paid on an ongoing basis.
“Wow”, thinks the website owner, “I’ve been struggling with this for so long, and here is an expert who does this for a living. Surely, my sales will skyrocket within days and I’ll be rich in no time”.
Unfortunately, this is not quite the way it happens. When the owner (let’s call him Jim) sits with the “SEO expert” (let’s call him Bob), who is really and SEO scams artist. Bob asks Jim to tell him about his website.
Let’s say Jim runs a doorknob business called “Jim’s doorknobs” and lives in a small town called Whoopwhoop.
Bob suggests that the best thing to do is to get Jim the first position in Google for the keyword phrase “woopwoop doorknobs”, and Jim excitedly agrees.
Bob, stating he is going to give Jim great service by working with additional phrases, throws in the keyword phrases “jim’s doorknobs” and even “best doorknobs in woopwoop”.
Jim leaves Bob’s office all pumped up and patiently waits for the sales to start pouring in.
A month goes by and the sales are pretty much the same, so Jim rings Bob. “Great news!” says Bob, “Like I said, you’re number one for your keywords now. Google them now and you’ll see”.
Sure enough, Bob has delivered on his promise, and Jim’s doorknob website is now the first to appear for his 3 chosen keyword phrases, but he gets no business. “Bob”, he says, “Why am I not getting any sales?”
“Oh, this takes a bit of time to build up, because of the way the search engines work, you know. Give it another month or two and you’ll see”.
After 3 months, Jim starts to suspect that something is wrong, so he calls his friend Bruce, who knows a little about Internet marketing. As soon as Bruce hears the chosen keyword phrases, he says to Jim, “I think there may only be a handful of people looking for these. Being number one for a keyword phrase nobody looks for will make you proud, but not rich”.
So next time someone tells you they’ll put you at the top of the search results, ask them how many times they think people might be using this keyword phrase each day on the Internet. Anything over 300 is good. If the answer is “I don’t know”, run away fast.
Of course, the keyword phrases you choose must also be directly linked to the problems you solve, the solutions you provide or some unique aspect of your business, so that you get qualified traffic you can convert to sales.
Remember, you want to get more business online, not more traffic, not a higher position, not a higher page rank and so on.
More business! That’s the only way to measure the success of your website.
Yours,
Gal