| Important Information about SEO Firms SEO is an abbreviation for "search engine optimizer." Many SEOs and other agencies and consultants provide useful services for website owners, from giving advice on site architecture and helping to find relevant directories to which a site can be submitted. However, a few unethical SEOs have given the industry a black eye through their overly aggressive marketing efforts and their attempts to unfairly manipulate search engine results. While we don't have relationships with any SEOs and don't offer recommendations, we do have a few solutions that will help you with getting your site picked up by search engines, and some helpful tips with maintaining your website and Internet ranking. Be wary of SEO firms and web consultants or agencies that send you email out of the blue. Unfortunetly, to many people believe these firms and SEO consultants. The end result is, money lost and a websites that sit on the internet un noticed with no traffic. No one can guarantee a #1 ranking on search engines. Beware of SEOs that claim to guarantee rankings, allege a "special relationship" with Google, Yahoo etc. or advertise a "priority submit" to these search engines. There is no priority submit for any search engines. In fact, the only way to submit a site is to directly submit through Add URL pages. Be careful if a company is secretive or won't clearly explain what they intend to do. Ask for explanations if something is unclear. If an SEO creates deceptive or misleading content on your behalf, such as doorway pages or "throwaway" domains, your site could be removed entirely from search engines. Ultimately, 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. You should never have to link to an SEO. Avoid SEOs that talk about the power of "free-for-all" links, link popularity schemes, or submitting your site to thousands of search engines. These are typically useless exercises that don't affect your ranking in the results of the major search engines -- at least, not in a way you would likely consider to be positive. Some SEOs may try to sell you the ability to type keywords directly into the browser address bar. Most such proposals require users to install extra software, and very few users do so. Evaluate such proposals with extreme care and be skeptical about the self-reported number of users who have downloaded the required applications. Be sure to understand where the money goes. While we never sell better ranking in our search results, several other search engines combine pay-per-click or pay-for-inclusion results with their regular web search results. Some SEOs will promise to rank you highly in search engines, but place you in the advertising section rather than in the search results. A few SEOs will even change their bid prices in real time to create the illusion that they "control" other search engines and can place themselves in the slot of their choice. This scam doesn't work with us because our advertising is clearly labeled and separated from our search results, but be sure to ask any SEO you're considering which fees go toward permanent inclusion and which apply toward temporary advertising. What are the most common abuses a website owner is likely to encounter? One common scam is the creation of "shadow" domains that funnel users to a site by using deceptive redirects. These shadow domains often will be owned by the SEO who claims to be working on a client's behalf. However, if the relationship sours, the SEO may point the domain to a different site, or even to a competitor's domain. If that happens, the client has paid to develop a competing site owned entirely by the SEO. Another illicit practice is to place "doorway" pages loaded with keywords on the client's site somewhere. The SEO promises this will make the page more relevant for more queries. This is inherently false since individual pages are rarely relevant for a wide range of keywords. More insidious, however, is that these doorway pages often contain hidden links to the SEO's other clients as well. Such doorway pages drain away the link popularity of a site and route it to the SEO and its other clients, which may include sites with unsavory or illegal content. What are some other things to look out for? There are a few warning signs that you may be dealing with a rogue SEO. It's far from a comprehensive list, so if you have any doubts, you should trust your instincts. By all means, feel free to walk away if the SEO: owns shadow domains puts links to their other clients on doorway pages offers to sell keywords in the address bar doesn't distinguish between actual search results and ads that appear in search results guarantees ranking, but only on obscure, long keyword phrases you would get anyway operates with multiple aliases or falsified WHO IS info gets traffic from "fake" search engines, spyware, or scumware has had domains removed from search engine index's or is not itself listed in search engines. |