CAUTION! Don’t fall for those SEO solicitations in your inbox!

Posted by ImageWorks Creative Team March 18, 2013

SEO Spammers vs The “White Hat” Brigade

You know that your business depends on its website to connect with customers and create sales opportunities so it may get your attention when you see an unsolicited email making such claims as:

“We've noticed that your site isn't ranking as well as it could in major search engines, but we can get you first page rankings….”

It might surprise you to learn that even Google receives these emails! They say:

Amazingly, we get these spam emails too:
"Dear google.com,
I visited your website and noticed that you are not listed in most of the major search engines and directories..."
Reserve the same skepticism for unsolicited email about search engines as you do for "burn fat at night" diet pills or requests to help transfer funds from deposed dictators.

These out-of-the-blue messages – a tactic used by heavy-handed, offshore, unscrupulous SEO companies – play upon a legitimate concern for business owners. However, they have a lot in common with all the other SPAM messages you receive. If you don't give Mary the Nigerian Widow your bank account number, and you aren't willing to “click here” to buy the next miracle diet pill, you also shouldn't give these threatening messages any of your attention.

Here's why.

1. Don't trust an amateur with a professional's job.

You wouldn't trust your health to a doctor known for cutting corners and using out-dated or unscrupulous practices. Don't trust the health of your website to a search engine optimization company that does those things, either. You need to know that the SEO work being performed on your site is reputable, honest, and what they describe in the industry as “white hat.” This means that the specialists who are optimizing your site keep abreast of updates to Google and other search algorithms, and that they use established best practices in obtaining back-links, writing content, and networking with article sites, bloggers, and other webmasters to promote your site in a natural, relevant manner.

2. As in life, there are no guarantees.

As much as we would love to promise our clients #1 rankings on Google, Yahoo, and Bing within a matter of months (or minutes!), there are no guarantees in SEO. Spammers who promise you such things are acting dishonestly. While some of them may employ tactics that attempt to “trick” search engines into giving a site higher ranking in the short-term, these same tactics can get your site banned from Google's listings when you get caught – and you will get caught!

3. Slow and steady wins the race.

SEO companies that guarantee results in a given time frame are also suspect. Legitimate, white-hat search engine optimization is a slow and time-consuming process. Even those of us who have been in the business for years cannot manipulate the search engines into ranking your site quickly and easily. SEO is a process – a continuing and ever-evolving process – that requires frequent testing, course-corrections, and adjustments in order to be successful. Instead of expecting to rank immediately for your most competitive keywords, you should look for overall increased traffic to your site and an increasing number of relevant phrases drawing your visitors in.