search engine optimization scams

Today it seems that the latest craze is to claim to be a search engine optimization expert. The problem is that depending upon who you talk with there are all sorts of stories you'll hear about what you must do to get results. Some search engine optimization companies offer a guarantee of results. I suggest to you that only Google can guarantee where your website will rank in a search engine. This isn't what people want to hear (the truth) and for this reason many people make a living from unsuspecting people from falling for the guarantee from unscrupulous people who claim to be SEO experts.

Today a client called my ad agency and asked the cost of a dedicated server. I thought this was an odd question because even some of our websites that get a lot of traffic and sell thousands of dollars worth of products don't have a dedicated server. A dedicated server is a website hosting server which only has one website. I asked why he needed a dedicated server and he told me that he hired a search engine optimization company that told him about the new Google Caffeine and that he would need a dedicated server to be sure that his website loads super fast. They offered him what he thought was a fair price for a dedicated server and he wanted to get my price. I suggested that he grab his wallet and run from those so called experts!

Yes Google likes websites that load fast just like you and I like websites that load fast. The difference in being on a shared server with a lot of other websites or a dedicated server with ONLY your website would be noticed mostly on the invoice for the dedicated server NOT in the search engine ranking.

Since the day you first decided to get a website for your business you have probably wondered what you can do to get your website to rank better. There are plenty of people who call themselves experts in SEO but there is something you should consider before hiring anyone to do Search Engine Optimization. There is no government agency that requires anyone to pass a board exam to become licensed as a SEO Expert. What this means is that if you wanted to do so you could print business cards which show your title as SEO Expert and start collecting money from anyone who will hire you. My point is that you have to look at the reputation of the company offering to do SEO work for you.

In the video above Google explains how their search engine works so you should be able to tell if someone is going to be able to help with your SEO or not.

You can also see the How Google Works video right on the Google website.

In the video above Google tells us how and why some websites will rank better than others. There is no secret to this and we can just watch the video and learn directly from Google and forget the so called SEO Experts!

Here is what Google says they use to determine how to rank websites.

They look at the words a person searched for such as "cheetah running speed".
They say that they ask about 200 questions to determine the ranking and they tell us some important ones.

They say that they look at the number of times the search words appear in the website. Notice that the man in the Google video did NOT say that they will rank the highest the site that uses the searched words the most. What this means is that if you just fill your website full of the search words you won't rank higher. This is because you'd lose ranking due to the website having poor quality. They look at the domain name so CheetahRunningSpeed.com would rank better in this search than AnimalsOfAfrica.com if everything else were equal. They look at other websites that link to yours and the quality of those websites. These incoming links are viewed as endorsements. The theory is that nobody would link to your site if they thought it wasn't very good. On the other hand if a lot of people link to your website then it must be good or why would they link to you. Your page ranking is in part based upon these incoming links. A website with a smaller number of links from very high ranking websites would have a better ranking than a website with a bigger number of links form poorly ranking websites.

I get emails every day from SEO companies offering me a link building program. I think most of these are scams that take advantage of the fact that many people have heard that they should get incoming links.  The reason I'd never hire one of these companies is that the people at Google are pretty smart and they recognize a bunch of spam type links when they detect them.  So what happens is that you pay the self proclaimed SEO Experts to get a bunch of links for you and then Google ignores them.

My suggestion is that you ignore the spam emails you get from people all over the world offering to do search engine optimization for you and find a reputable SEO company.