"There's A Lot of Crap Out There"
We hear that from clients and potential clients all the time. With the job market the way it is, there are a lot of unqualified "consultants" trying to win business and a lot of unethical companies that are trying to make the work that they do get stretch into more than it should. From an SEO and web marketing standpoint, there are a lot of things that you should avoid spending money on for several reasons. The methods may be outdated and no longer work, or may be considered "black hat" or illegal by the search engines, or may just be completely unecessary and a scam to run up your charges. Here is a list of the most common wastes of SEO and internet marketing money that we see:
• Monthly Submission of your Website to the search engines. This is unnecessary and ridiculous. If you have just a few links pointing to your website, the search engines will naturally find it. You don't need to re-submit your site once it has been found.
• Charging monthly rates for work that should have a one-time fee. While there many things that need to be done on an ongoing basis, such as link-building campaigns, email marketing, and content creation, there are others that are one-time deals - such as profile set-ups, on page optimizations of your site, and search engine and directory submissions.
• Removing excess code from your website's underlying code - while this sounds very technical and necessary, Per the Big 3 (Google, Yahoo, Bing) it's not. The search engines don't care how much code is on the page and they just pay attention to the viewable text on the website.
• "First Page" rankings using Pay-Per-Click - If anyone is offering you "First Page Ranking in 48 Hours", you can bet it's with Paid Listings, which don't help your website and vanish as soon as you stop paying for them.
• Hidden Text - I think we talk about this in our "Black Hat" blog post - This can actually get you banned in the search engines! Some companies and web designers will optimize your website using hidden text on your website that is designed ot manipulate your ranking in the search engines.
• Top Rankings for Unsearched Terms - Don't get starry-eyed over a "top ranking" promise. We can get you ranked #1 in Google for the term "three legged purple donkey" in a matter of days. Is that what you want? Will It bring you paying customers? Didn't think so.
• Automated Social Media Management - Do NOT allow a company to completely automate your social media accounts (Twitter, Facebook, etc) without first sitting down and going over the ramifications. It completely flies in the face of being "Social" and creating a community of like-minded peers with which to share ideas, life, and YOUR BUSINESS interests.
|
