Jun242009Guarding against SEO / SEM Scams
Every now and then, the team at SEO Bootstrap gets to toss aside our Clark Kent frames and don a superman outfit. Typically this happens after we discover some method that can risk our clients’ and followers an intriguing SEO angle pitched to us by a consultant, colleague, or indirectly by a twitter follower. Here are a few common ones:
Scam #1: Millions of FREE PPC Clicks from Google!
There are a multitude of web sites and twitterers promoting $40 or $300 packages to uncover how to get millions of visitors. In the past this involved signing up with Google for pay per click and taking advantage of the free $50 PPC budget for first time Google advertising customers. Nowdays, these packages describes methods of generating leads for free by creating web sites that simply generate ad revenue through Google AdSense, which the site owner can then plow back into Google pay per click. The latter is a legitmate, but hardly revolutionary method.
Scam #2: Get Your Site Listed or Linked from Hundreds of Websites!
These services generally involve placing a link to your site on hundreds of web sites, as advertised. However, those sites will generally have very low pagerank, little meaningful content, and hundreds of other links which means that the traffic and link popularity benefit will be minimal. Additionally, Google, Bing, Yahoo! and other search engines frown upon this tactic, considering it “spam” – a link from many such pages that are tracked as “spammy” can result in a reduction, not an increase, in your ranking.
Scam #3: Blogging for Bucks
It is a “well known” secret that bloggers often take a fee to promote a product. Its only natural for bloggers to want to make a living – they won’t be able to spend hours of time researching and discussing topics without some backing. However, unlike traditional media like newspapers that have developed quite extensive ethical codes to help them navigate the quandries of covering topics related to the companies that advertise, bloggers have not yet developed accepted standards of disclosure. The risk with paying bloggers is less about SEO and more about the strong potential for discover by the hundreds of other bloggers policing ethics in the blogosphere. If you are caught obtaining extensive promotion that masquarades as a spontaneous review, you may be called out in someone’s blog, leading to bad press and damage to your brand. Proceed with care!
