Separating the legitimate search engine optimization (SEO) companies from the fly-by-night companies can be a daunting task since there are so many from which to choose. With a little investigative legwork, however, you should be able to avoid most pitfalls. Below is a list of the common scams and tips on how to check out the companies offering the hooks.

Guaranteed Rankings

Guarantees by themselves are not bad as many legitimate SEO companies offer some sort of guarantee on their work or services. What to watch out for are the guarantees that offer pie-in-the-sky results (such as rank number 1 in Google in 2 weeks) or guarantees that are so watered down that they are meaningless. Expectations of results for new, uneducated customers are usually unrealistic in the SEO world, so customers need to be educated as to what they should realistically expect in regard to time, budget, and competition.

Some illegitimate SEO companies will play off of these “drive-up window” expectations and promise unrealistic time-frames for results. Later, these companies will balk at giving refunds, offer you other services for more money in place of refunds, become unreachable by mail, email or phone or disappear altogether.

A couple of methods of checking out SEO companies is to Google the company name to see if there are any bad reviews and also checking with Whois tools (through Network Solutions or another provider) to find out who the registered owner, administrative contact and technical contacts are and if these contacts look legitimate. Legitimate companies will try to be transparent, so if the Whois info looks suspicious, then buyer beware.

SEO Email Spam

“We’ve noticed that you are not listed in some search engines” the email begins. This is Spam that even Bill Gates receives. The best way to find an SEO company is to search the major search engines you wish to be listed upon for them and not let them come to you. After all if an SEO company can get their sites high in the search engine rankings, chances are they can do the same for you.

Get 1000’s Of Links To Your Site Automatically

In early days it would have helped a website if you were listed on link farms or FFA (Free-For-All) sites, but now this will get your website penalized by most search engines. So, not only will a company take your money to put a link back to your site on 1000’s of unrelated sites, but your search engine rankings will suffer for this as well. Just say no to this service.

Get Listed On Thousands Of Search Engines

First, thousands of the lesser, if not questionable search engines will not bring much business to your site. Your focus needs to be on the major search engines, directories and social media (Google, Yahoo, Bing, Yelp, Facebook, Twitter etc.). Second, being listed on thousands of search engines is not the same as being ranked highly on thousands of search engines. Very simply put, the company will take your money, use a piece of software to broadcast your URL to thousands of small search engines and the traffic you will receive in return will most likely be minimal to none. It is much better to avoid this altogether and hand-submit your URL to directories and social media. If your website has a couple or more links pointing to it, then let the search engines come to you (Googlebot and other crawlers will find your website quicker than you think).

Cloaking

Cloaking is an unethical technique used by some shady black hat SEO scammers to serve up one page of highly optimized text to the search engines and a different page to your visitors. While not a scam in the same sense of the other scams (since you may see some good results for a short while), it is problematic since, over time, your site will be caught by the search engines and your domain name will be banned.

So the effect is that you will be engaging in unethical activity, you will pay money for this, and your site will suffer by being dropped from the search engine rankings. One way to catch this activity is by watching for other files your SEO may be placing in your website’s root folder on the server that is hosting your site. If someone is placing files on your website’s webhost without your permission, then find out why. It could be legitimate such as placing a robots.txt file there or it could something shady. But as the website owner, you need to be a hawk when it comes to work that is being done on your behalf.

More SEO Tricks

What to watch out for with some SEO companies

First of all, when you are choosing a search engine optimization company you want to find one that has a website with with well-written and up-to-date information. Use of incorrect English on a website or a website with numerous spelling a grammar errors should give you pause.

Some SEO companies will guarantee that you see significant results within a couple of days for a new website. This is an unrealistic statement that no reputable SEO company would make. Most significant results from search engine optimization will occur in months, not days, for national or international websites with a decent amount of competition. It is possible to rank some local websites with low competition in days / weeks, however.

Some search engines like Google and Bing may index your new website within a few days, but your search engine placement will be in a sort of “holding tank” for a while and may be buried in the search engine database. Sure, your site may be listed, in short order but it will take additional time to gain prominence in the search engine rankings (SERPs).

Also, some search engine optimization firms will guarantee newbies high-ranking results on low-traffic keyword phrases that have little competition in the search engines. If you are an SEO company who is not concerned about your customer, this approach makes sense. There are fewer high-traffic keywords than low-traffic keywords and the high-traffic keywords generally have much more competition.

There is an SEO scam on the Internet that consumers need to be aware of called the “I’ll host your optimized pages” scam. In the “I’ll host your optimized pages” scam you do not have control of your own webpages and basically pay ransom to the host company on an ongoing basis. Once you miss a payment your webpages may disappear or the optimization you had previous paid for will be wiped clean.

Have you been unfortunate enough to receive the SEO spam scam? This is the email scam that starts out, “I’ve noticed you are not listed on some search engines.” You may have gotten this email even though you are listed on the front page on all of the major search engines. First, any reputable SEO company will not spam you to gain business. The first quest of any SEO company is to try to get to the top of the search engines (or deliver traffic), not send out spam. Second, this email is not specific to you or your company. Like all spam, the spammers send out thousands of emails hoping a small percentage pay off for big profits. Ethical website optimization includes no cloaking, no deceptive practices and no spamming.

In addition, watch out for companies that call themselves “black hat” SEO’s. Like in the old western movies, those wearing black hats were the bad guys and those wearing white hats were the good guys. So, black hat SEO’s use underhanded methods that may initially get your website good rankings (and give them your good money) but will eventually result in your website being penalized or banned.

This list is not comprehensive so it is a good idea to ask your SEO company questions upfront and that you receive answers to your satisfaction before you jump onboard. Also, if you have had any bad experiences with some SEO companies not covered here, please send us an email so that we may include what to watch out for in this section and warn other consumers.

More Reading on Avoiding SEO Scams

6 Warning Signs You May Be Dealing With an SEO Scam Artist – https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/236090

How To Avoid Being Taken Advantage Of By SEO Scammers – https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesagencycouncil/2017/06/02/how-to-avoid-being-taken-advantage-of-by-seo-scammers/#c771a67791d2

How to Avoid SEO & Digital Marketing Scams – https://moz.com/ugc/how-to-avoid-seo-digital-marketing-scams