Search Engine Optimization SEO Service

SEO Scams by Web Design Firms

Search engine optimization can turn a business around if done right. However, there are many rip-off or scam artists out there who have no SEO qualifications or experience. Their so-called "SEO" can do more harm than good to your web site's rankings and your business bottom line.

It is unfortunate that many of these SEO frauds are committed by web designers or web design companies. Many business owners who have been victimized by various SEO scam schemes have serious doubt as to whether SEO is a good way to market to their customers. To help you protect your business and investment, we provide some tips on how to spot an SEO scam.

1. An "SEO Add-On" by a web design company is worthless. Most business owners fall for this trap and buy the SEO packages offered by their web designers or web design companies. A web design company is NOT an SEO company. Having your web designer optimize your web site is no different from having your dentist do a liver transplant surgery. Web design is about communicating visually and artistically through layouts, colors, graphics, animations, etc., whereas SEO is about numbers, algorithms, analytics and math. For web design, the right brain is much more involved than the left brain, while the opposite is true for search engine optimization.

2. How to tell a web design company from an SEO company. Many honest web design companies tell their clients that they can't deliver search engine optimization. Some of them help their clients find a quality SEO expert or firm to handle the optimization work. But if your web designer or web design company isn't so upfront their inability to deliver what they promise, what should you do? Check out their web site and see if their primary focus is on web design. Most web design companies have a brief mention of their SEO service. A typical web design company has a portfolio of the web sites they design, but they don't have any top search engine ranking samples to show. That is a sign that the company has NO ideas about search engine optimization

3. Get a clear explanation of how SEO works. Even if you know search engine optimization, pretend that you don't. Ask the SEO provider to explain in layman's language what SEO is all about, what needs to be done and how it is done. If the SEO provider keeps referring "meta tags", it is a sign that all they know is some outdated techniques, or even some banned techniques by major search engines.

4. Be aware of any low-price packages like $99.95 a month. Instead of paying $99.95 for 6 months, you are much better off paying an SEO expert a couple of hours for consultation. Quality search engine optimization services are not cheap, but when you compare SEO to marketing through other media, you will find that SEO is most cost-effective. A half-page ad on the Yellow Pages can cost $5,000 a month in the Minneapolis, St Paul area. If someone tells you that for less than a $100 a month, their SEO can outperform your Yellow Pages ad, doesn't it sound too good to be true?

5. Always find your SEO company at Google. Does 50-pound-overweight person have any credibility in giving out weight loss advice? Does an SEO firm have any credibility if their own web site is not findable at major search engines, especially Google? Do your own homework and check out the rankings of the company you plan to work with. If they can't get their own web site to the top, they can't do yours.

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SEO vs Yellow Pages

If you have ever talked with a salesperson from your local Yellow Pages company, you can feel how desperate the industry is. In the old days when every business had to have a presence in the Yellow Pages and companies compete with each other for attention by printing larger ads, Yellow Pages in some locations charge $5,000/month for a half-page ad. That is $60,000 a year! A full-page ad can cost a business over $100,000 a year!

Well, as search engines become the place for people to search for products, services and information, smart businesses are putting their money into search engine optimization to make their websites more findable by searchers. When it comes to cost, SEO costs only a fraction of the Yellow Pages ad's. Unlike Yellow Pages charges a fixed price over 12 months, regardless of the results, SEO can be very scalable. The SEO cost can be varied based on the business' needs. Even spending $5,000 on SEO can produce great, long-lasting results.

Many business owners are still skeptical about the effectiveness of SEO. Well, if SEO doesn't work, why do you think your competitors are all doing it? Based on the experience of our clients, those who advertised on Yellow Pages have all stopped after they started with our SEO service. In term of the return on investment, SEO outperforms Yellow Pages by 5-10 times.

Yellow Pages companies are pulling some "magic" internet tricks, which amount to some worthless advertising. They build a generic website from their standard template so your web site looks identical to your competitors' sites or even sites from another industry. They then use the pay-per-click advertising to get some traffic. Only 20-30% of web users use pay-per-click. The Yellow Pages strategy leaves out the majority of the web audience. No wonder it didn't work, isn't working and will not work.

If you are still debating whether to renew your Yellow Pages ads, here is an objective look at this dying industry by The Wall Street Journal:

The yellow-pages industry is running out of lifelines.

In recent years, as its customers migrated to the Web -- flocking to sites like Google -- the telephone-directory business followed, hoping the Internet
would be its salvation.

But that strategy hasn't panned out. Now, the economic downturn is sending the already ailing business into a tailspin.

The audience for online yellow pages remains relatively small, and traffic growth is slowing. So many directory services are vying for the ad dollars of local businesses that no single site has an authoritative roster.

Meanwhile, ad dollars are drying up as small businesses -- the industry's bread and butter -- find it harder to pay bills or have cut their spending sharply.

... ,.. Quoted from Extinction Threatens Yellow-Pages Publishers, by
EMILY STEEL, The Wall Street Journal, Nov 17, 2008

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