New Search Engine Scammers Could Be Hurting Your Business

An unfortunate truth about the evolving digital landscape is that with every innovation comes a spin-off sector of scammers profiting from it. The latest trend is devious Search Engine Optimization (SEO) companies promising to increase your web site's visibility multi-fold, for a low one-time fee.

"You know the old axiom: if something's too good to be true- then it is," said Andreas Huttenrauch of Globi Web Solutions, a leading Calgary Internet consulting firm. "Well that's never been more accurate than in the Internet world."

Gone are the days when simply having a site on the world wide web meant an endless horizon of new business opportunities. The horizon is endless, but it is also crowded- and the new challenge is getting your site seen. Enter the SEOs and their misrepresenting affiliates.

One of many similar claims floating around cyber-space these days is from an SEO boasting to register your site on 1,500 Search Engines for $96.25 CDN. An amazing deal considering Yahoo!, one of the net's top directories, charges $299 US annually for registration. Not so amazing when you see that though there may be an abundance of search engines out there, 85% of Internet traffic is handled by the top few, usually not included in these fantastic offers.

Instead, these SEO's will send your site to a few search engines and directories and to many free-for-all pages (FFA's). This is an antiquated system of free pages that anyone can post their link on, but no one can find. The scammers use software programs automatically posting your site on these meaningless pages-artificially increasing your visibility while never doing any hands-on work for your individual needs. This is the first red-flag of a fraudulent SEO.

"A good SEO will always start by optimizing your site's content- streamlining it, making it reflective and recognizable to search engines," said Huttenrauch. "Content is the key to being found, and this is always a human process."

It can also be very effective. In a study done by Jupiter Research, a leading research company in the US, reputable SEO's charge upwards of $15,000 per year, with web-site traffic increases from 25 to 100 per cent.

According to Huttenrauach, effective SEO services can be much less expensive, but they are always accomplished hands-on by professionals.

   Almost all reputable search engines and directories actually disallow automated web-site submissions these days, and some even impose penalties affecting your site's rank and status. So not only are these fraudulent SEO's not doing anything to help your business, they may actually be hurting it.

   The simple truth is that high site visibility on the Internet is a moving target, no matter what the sector, and hitting it requires time spent by understanding professionals- not a faceless program and empty promises.