How to Tell Good SEO from Bad and Avoid Getting Ripped Off... or Worse
Last month, we received the following email from a subscriber...
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I recently hired an SEO company to optimize my site. So far, my PageRank has improved, but I'm still not ranking for any of my keywords. I've read in your publication about the importance of getting trusted and topically relevant links. However, when I checked some of the links pointing to my site, they were from a variety of sources (including some adult-themed sites), and none of them seemed to have anything to do with my site's topic. I'm concerned that I'm being cheated. I've spent quite a bit of money for this service and been boosted to a PageRank 5, but I'm still not seeing any customer traffic from the search engines. |
My reply...
I looked into your particular situation, and, in this case—yes, you are being cheated, although in fairness to your current optimization company, we've definitely seen much worse.
The worst of these companies are still charging to optimize your keyword meta tags and submit your site to the "top 10,000 search engines," — tactics which have been demonstrated again and again to have zero effect on boosting search engine rankings. Obviously, those companies should be avoided.
The company you hired at least put some effort into getting you links, which is why you now have that PageRank 5. The problem is that they took the cheap and easy route to link building, whic...
