Shark illustration for C3 Advertising by Jennifer Mason
When the conversation starts, everything’s rosy. The sky is Disney pink and blue. The birds are singing. And then a friend or colleague says, “We just found someone who’s going to to get us to the top of search engine rankings.”
That’s when everything changes. My stomach churns. The sky grows dark. In my head, I hear the soundtrack from Jaws. “DUH duh…DUH duh…DUH duh…” And I hold my breath in fear until I learn whether the story has a happy ending.
A happy ending is that the friend has found an honest and competent SEO resource. Another happy ending is that the friend has been lured in by a shark, but hasn’t yet signed a contract or paid any money. There’s still a chance I can turn the boat around and steer it safely back to land.
The unhappy ending, of course, is that my friend or colleague has spent money on something that will not do them any good, and may do them considerable harm. Rather than wait for any more of those conversations, I thought I’d share six types of SEO sharks, and tell you how you can protect yourself.
Some are old, some new. Some are truly dangerous, others merely a waste of money. Some I thought were dead, until they recently poked their ragged fins out of the water.
1. I’ll Take You To The Top, Baby
Confusing the sizzle with the steak
How it works: Someone offers to put you at the top of search engine results with their “magic” combinations of keyword phrases, multiplied blogs, long landing pages of nonsensical keywords, and specially written content. (Usually, the “specially written content” is so bad that you would be embarrassed to be seen in public with it.)
The theory: If you get out of the crowded field of your competition and focus on highly specific keyword combinations, you’ll quickly rank on the first page of Google search-engine results.
We're #1...if the search term is "the butterfly sneakers that Joe Celebrity wore the last time he went to court"
The fact: You might actually get to the top of the mountain. But it will be the wrong mountain, and nobody will be there. For example, say you’re a new brand of sneakers. On a search of “sneakers”, you’re on page 14, below Nike, Reebok, Zappo’s, and Converse. But on a search with a more specific keyword phrase recommended by the experts: “the butterfly sneakers that Joe Celebrity wore the last time he went to court” — you’re #1! And you’ll stay #1, for the one person per year who is going to search for that term. By total coincidence, that one person may even be someone who works for the company that sold you the service.
Red flag #1: Performance guarantees, if any, only promise to deliver first-page rankings on the company’s “recommended” search terms.
Red flag #2: You often have to pay hefty fees for the service in advance.
Red flag #3: During the sales process, no one ever talks about conversions or sales. In the pitch, and in abundant testimonials, the focus is only on rankings as the goal.
In all the years I’ve been working with SEO, in all the various forms that this keyword “program” has taken, I’ve only ever found ONE company that claimed success with one of these programs. No one else– no client, no acquaintance, no colleague–has ever been able to point to a single qualified lead that came through their site from one of these programs, let alone a conversion to a sale. The company that claims success believe they had an extra $10K in sales during their program. That sounds great, except that the program cost $10K. Their net increase is thus zero–if you don’t count the sales lost from the $10K of budget they diverted from actual advertising.
How to do it better: First, and most important, don’t forget that your goal is sales, not search engine rankings. (Click here for a free downloadable reminder.) Second, if you’re competing in a very crowded field, use search — and relevant content, and other media — to target smaller niche audiences first. Plan your campaigns well, and build from there.
2. Stuffing Your Meta Tags With Popular Keywords
Simple! Understandable! Except that you don’t need it anymore
Zeppelin maintenance programs: Handy once, but no longer useful.
I wrote about this once before, so I’ll keep it short.
How it works: For a monthly fee, an SEO “expert” offers to research all the popular search terms, and update your website’s meta tags on a frequent basis, usually weekly.
The theory: People who are searching for the keywords of the day will find your site. The more sophisticated practitioners of this art also point out that changing your keywords changes your content frequently, which search engines like.
The fact: This isn’t evil so much as it is outdated. There are a lot of things wrong with this theory — targeted marketing, anyone? — but the most obvious is that Google doesn’t use meta tags anymore, precisely because people did stuff like this. So signing up for a meta tag service is like buying a service to keep your Zeppelin filled with hydrogen.
Red flag: It sounds great, but only if you don’t think about it too hard.
SEO consequences: You’ve wasted your money, but Google won’t get mad at you. You’ll just be ignored.
A better way: Implement a good, real search strategy that includes pay-per-click, and update your website content — your actual content — regularly, with information that’s useful to your target audience.
3. Irrelevant Reciprocal links
Google, Yahoo, and Bing really do judge you by the company you keep
How it works: You get a polite email — coincidentally, like the one I got this morning — inviting you to trade links with someone you’ve never heard of, usually in a three-way swap. (I’ll link to you from my site; you link to “my” other website). The URLs and code are included; both sites look legit, nobody asks you for any money. What could be the harm?
The theory: Links are good for you. So wouldn’t it be a good idea to trade links with other websites?
The fact: Links to your site are good for you. But not all links are equally good, and some are very, very bad.
Search engines count relevant links as one measure of content value. If I’m writing a blog about vegan cooking, and I link it to a food site that sells “Ten delicious substitutes for mozzarella”, search engines assume that I’m suggesting relevant content to their readers, and will rank the substitute-mozzarella site accordingly. Here’s how this one was supposed to work:
An educational software site links to a six-year-old site for a student film, which includes a link to the Services page of a PR firm. Red flag #1: there’s no relevant content connection among these three sites.
Red flag #2: Your site link will be at the end of a list of hundreds of links on the educational software site. They don’t look like links, and they don’t have any connection to what you do (in this case, the proposed list includes jewelry, auto parts, computer repair, loans, business consulting, travel to Greece, Indian call centers, hair color, forklifts, wrinkle cream, charcoal portraits, steam showers, Christmas stockings, dozens of SEO consultants, and a London handyman.)
Why it won’t work: It flunks the relevancy test.
SEO consequences: Small (search engines may just ignore it) to significant ( If it comes onto their radar — for example, if you submit your site to a search engine — they may reject your request, or blacklist you, and tell you to try again when you’ve cleaned up your act. )
A better way: Fill your website and blog with actual relevant content that will be of interest to people in your target audience, and then market it to let them know it’s there.
4. Link Farms
The very last reason you want to land at the top of search results–or in The New York Times
Websites created just to be link farms are no more real than these movie set facades.
How it works: Someone creates hundreds or thousands of small websites with relevant content. The sites have real content, they say all the right things about your category, and they link back to your site with vigor. The only problem is that the sites and URLs are all fake. They exist only to fool Google into thinking that the whole world is linking back to you. Or, the sites are legitimate, but the site owner is paid to link back to you.
The theory: Links from sites with relevant content are very, very good for you.
The fact: True. But search engines do not take kindly to being scammed with phony websites or drummed-up content, no matter how relevant.
Why it doesn’t work: It might, for a little while, until you are a) publicly humiliated and b) sent into exile by Google. Just search “J.C. Penney Google search fiasco” and see what happens. It is not, normally, a good sign to have your company name and “fiasco” in the same sentence.
Red flag: This service is not on the SEO consultant’s website. They suggest that you don’t bring it up in public. You are discouraged from asking other clients about it.
Hidden danger: We have heard that some of the content on these phony websites is plagiarized from other, legitimate websites. We haven’t seen examples of the phony pages, but it’s plausible — if your in-house or outsourced search team is generating hundreds of pages of phony links, and you aren’t paying them for hundreds of hours of copywriting, that text has to come from somewhere. If that’s the case, in addition to violating search engine webmaster terms, you could be adding copyright violation to your sea of troubles.
A better way: Think past the current quarter. You’ll be more successful in the long run, and you won’t have spent a small fortune to get kicked off of Google.
5. Secret Knowledge
Only the Chosen Ones can understand SEO
Keyword research should be done methodically and professionally. But there's not a lot of mystery to it.
How it works: Someone offers to provide you with SEO services that will catapult you ahead of everyone else because the practitioner possesses “secret knowledge”, “insider information,” a “proprietary system”, or a methodology that’s “too complicated to explain.”
The theory: SEO is a chamber of secrets, and a few clever souls with secret knowledge–and your money–can game the system.
The fact: SEO is a discipline, and you get good at it the same way you get good at any other discipline: learn it, practice it, stay up on changes in the field, and strive to get better at it every day. There’s no doubt that some people do it better than others, but that makes SEO just like any other field.
But there is no secret society, no mysterious insight, no magic system that’s known only to a few worthy souls. Of course search engines keep the ever-changing details of their methodology and algorithms close to the vest; they are trade secrets. But the principles are widely known. Google even has a blog for webmasters and its own You Tube channel.
Red flag #1: If the process is so mysterious, there’s no way to tell if the person who’s offering the service knows what they’re doing. Real experts aren’t going to give you tutorials in how they do it, but they’re happy to give you enough details to let you know they’re knowledgeable. It’s the difference between a mechanic who explains the problem and shows you the part that needs to be replaced, and one who mumbles “it’s broken. I’ll fix it.”
Red flag #2: If you don’t know what’s in the package, you can’t know if it’s worth the asking price.
Why it won’t–or will–work: In this case, you have two possible outcomes. The first is that the person is being mysterious because they really can’t deliver, and it’s a genuine scam. The second is that the person knows how to do it, but doesn’t want to tell you what’s involved, either out of fear that you’ll do it yourself, or because they’re overcharging for it.
6. Blog Spam
How to deeply annoy people you’ve never met
Nobody likes a blog spammer, either.
How it works: An SEO practitioner offers to insert your link into many blogs, most of which have nothing to do with your product category. Usually these comments are innocuous flattery and include a link that’s disguised in a long, nonsensical URL. On a blog about natural history museums, for example, someone will post a comment on the order of “best posting I’ve read all year!” and then includes a link to a website about carpet cleaning.
The theory: When bloggers link to your site, or when people mention you in blog comments, it’s valuable for your search engine rankings. Blog entries, comments, and links are seen as having a high probability of having relevant content.
The fact: Search engines know that people who blog about a topic, and those who comment on the blogs, are usually passionate about, or have some expertise in, the subject at hand. So yes, they do count this content as highly relevant. But just as much as relevant links count, irrelevant links don’t count. And let’s face it, this is really rude behavior. You wouldn’t like it if someone did it to your blog.
Red flag: If you’re considering paying someone to do something that you wouldn’t like to experience, it’s probably not a good idea.
Why it doesn’t work: Take your pick: 1) search engines don’t like irrelevant content or links. 2) Many bloggers have replaced automatic forums with options that let them review comments before posting. Some ban comments with links. 3) Blogging platforms like WordPress have added spam filters to their packages. 4) No one will like you. 5) You run the small, but very real, risk that a customer or prospect will see what you’re doing and be unimpressed.
For a while, this blog was getting two or three spam postings a week from an insurance company in Atlanta. When I got sick of trashing the comments, I called the insurance company. I spoke to a very nice lady, and confirmed what I’d suspected: they had contracted with a firm to do all their SEO, but didn’t know much about the details. They had no idea that they were offending a total stranger in California. They apologized for their vendor’s behavior, and the spam to this blog stopped immediately. They probably also breathed a sigh of relief that I wasn’t a potential customer.
How to do it better: Blogs are great, on so many levels. The good ones are gold mines of information about what’s on the minds of your target market. If someone in your industry — blogger, commenter, industry expert, customer — finds your website content valuable enough to mention, you’ve struck SEO gold. Writing one, or posting thoughtful, relevant, and appropriate comments to a topic, are good ways to establish and share your expertise, and get people to link to you. In other words, have good, relevant content.
Is this everything?
Unfortunately, no.
There are scammers, sharks, and the well-meaning but deeply misguided aplenty, and they’re all coming up with new ways to try to beat the SEO odds.
Moreover, search engines are changing the landscape all the time. Yahoo/Bing now accounts for a significantly larger volume of search. Google is rumored to be making significant changes in the near future.
So how do you protect yourself from SEO sharks, without becoming an expert in a field that’s changing daily? Here are a few simple guidelines:
- You’ve been hearing this since grade school, but it’s still valid: If it’s too good to be true, it probably isn’t.
- The major search engines have made it really easy to check out facts and fiction. Google has a webmaster blog and a channel on YouTube, and they’re in plain English. If someone offers you a service that sounds shady, search it. In a couple of minutes, you’ll have a much more solid understanding of the service being offered.
- If you don’t understand the service being offered, don’t buy it.
