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Avoid These 5 Common SEO Scams

There’s no doubt that Search Engine Optimization is one of the most effective ways of gaining traffic and increasing exposure to your website. There was once a time that search engine optimization was primitive and had no actual way of determining the relevance of a website’s content. It was a free-for-all where website owners simply focused on churning out content regardless of whether or not the content was relevant.

Today, Google, Yahoo!, and Bing have all stepped up their game, and now search results are ranked based on special algorithms that determine relevance by structure, punctuation, word sequence, and keyword density. This proceeded to distinguish good SEO practices (white hat SEO) from bad SEO practices (black hat SEO). The funny thing is that SEO scammers are still trying to use these old tricks to deceive small-time business owners into buying into their scam.

While these black hat SEO tricks may gain your website some traffic early on, your website will be penalized by the system (Google’s mostly) and your website will fall far below in rankings or worse, it may end up in SEO badlands, where your website might not even get indexed to begin with.

So, what tricks am I talking about? Read on.

A Guaranteed #1 Ranking

If it sounds too good to be true, then it probably is. This old adage couldn’t be truer here. If an SEO consultant claims that he can guarantee that your website will rank #1, then walk away immediately. This is because nobody, except those who own the search engines, have the ability to rank sites. Scammers will often claim that they have a special relationship with these search engines. Just walk away.

Free SEO Trial

SEO is an arduous task that isn’t to be taken lightly. This means that anyone who would offer a free trial period to allow you to determine whether they are a fit for your project is foolish. Have you ever had a doctor offer a “free trial medical procedure”? My point exactly.

SEO Consultant Owns Your Content After Treatment
As self-explanatory as this may be, there are some scammers who are more clandestine with their hack. They may adhere to all of Google’s guidelines, they may effectively increase your website ranking, but at the end of the contract, they end up owning the content that they produce for your site. They can easily hold your content hostage, or worse, they could sell it to a competitor.This is exactly why you should make it a habit to read contracts thoroughly.

Secret SEO Strategies
During your interview, you should always ask your candidate how they plan on raising your website ranking. This not only provides you with a snapshot of how well a candidate’s mastery over SEO is, but it also helps weed out the legitimate from the shady. Scammers will often claim that they have special SEO strategies that only they are allowed to know about.

Google Algorithm Mastery

Some SEO scammers will claim that they know exactly how Google’s search engine algorithm works. Once again, walk away as soon as they say this, because nobody but Google knows how the algorithm works. Google doesn’t disclose this algorithm for a reason — to prevent anyone from gaming the system. Google wants to make sure that only relevant content gets pushed to users.

Now, if you really want a guarantee that you’re going to be working with a legitimate SEO consultant/agency, consider visiting this site: BestSEOCompanies.com

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