I have covered this subject in a previous article but I felt it worth covering in more detail. Many of my customers receive regular sales calls from Search Engine Optimisation companies trying to sell their services. Whilst I am sure there are genuine companies around, I have yet to encounter one.
There are two things in particular that strike me as a bit strange. If they are really that good at search engine optimisation, why do they feel the need to find customers by calling them on the telephone? Secondly, the way they generally find my customers is via a search engine, a sign that they are already doing well.
So how can you tell whether or not a Search Engine Optimisation specialist is any good? Whilst you can never be 100% sure, there are three surefire ways of weeding out the dodgy companies. The first is one of the biggest lies on the Internet
The simple truth is that they can't. You can read in Google's webmaster guidelines that this simply is not true. What they do, is create a complex contract that will either be so complex, that gettinig a refund is next to impossible or the phrase for which they have guaranteed to get you onto page one is an uncompetitive phrase that nobody ever searches for. However, if they make this promise, my advice is to steer clear of them.
Again, Google state in their webmaster guidelines that they are in partnership with no search engine optimisation specialists. If they tell you this, they are lying.
If you do take out a contract with them, there is a very sneaky method that is often used to try and convince you that they are creating thousands of valuable inbound links for you. If they obtain thousands of inbound links in a short space of time, you can be sure that these are almost certainly worthless. This is a good time to introduce our new YouTube channel. We have recently uploaded a video about this very subject.