Does SEO Work Or Is It A Scam?
As with any type of business that springs up quickly and takes hold of a market, people have questioned whether SEO really does work or if it is all a scam. The SEO industry has exploded over the past few years so it is no surprise that there are those which question its validity.
Frankly, SEO does really work if proper SEO is used. Your website does need good search engine optimization performed on it if you want to give your website a fair shot of being listed high in the search engine results. Inbound links, quality writing, quality content and proper keyword use are all very important in natural SEO. Many spend thousands of dollars on banner ads and pay per clicks ads every month only to find that their products aren’t selling, their services are not being used or no one is reading their website content. Paid “unnatural” website advertising such as pay per click ads also need to be constantly monitored and tracked. Many website owners do not have the time to properly monitor their advertising on their own.
Good SEO can do the same thing as those expensive advertising methods. That’s not to say that you should never use pay per click advertising or banner advertisements, but they shouldn’t be the heart of your website’s advertising. By making a few changes to your website and gaining inbound links, SEO can give your website an excellent opportunity to be part of the top ranked websites.
If this is all true, then why does SEO sometimes get a bad rap? As with any business, there are those out there with practice unethical SEO techniques. These unethical SEO companies and professionals perform what’s called “black hat” SEO. Their SEO tactics include spamming the search engines and placing automated programs which try and trick the search engines into seeing something on a website that isn’t there or vice versa.
There are also SEO professionals out there that will take your money but will not optimize your website at all. If they do, it is very minimal and will not help your search engine rankings. These so called “professionals” prey on the people which know little to nothing about SEO.
There are bad apples in every business out there and SEO is not an exception. While SEO is not a scam by any means, you do need to check out the professional or company before you decide who you are going to use for your website’s SEO. A good company should be able to provide you with several references and provide you with solid statistics of past work they have done. You can also check on the Internet to see if any complaints have been filed against the company. When speaking with a representative from a SEO company, ask them what exactly they do to optimize websites. If they mention anything about automated programs or link farms, this will give you a good indication that they practice black hat SEO. Not many firms will admit this up front, but by paying attention to the words they use, you can get a good idea whether or not the company is ethical.
Last, when shopping for a SEO company, you should get price quotes from several different companies. Ones which offer really cheap quotes in comparison to the other companies may be trying to sell a scam. SEO can be time consuming and a long process depending on the website. No one is going to do all that work for next to nothing.
