420 Design Blog
Avoiding the SEO expert trap
08 May 2006 | Angie H
Recently, a client of ours (who much to her own benefit) was approached by an SEO "specialist' claiming he could guarantee her site would reach #1 in Google in a matter of weeks. When she told me of this I, of course, was skeptical. Then she told me how much he would charge her. And I nearly fell over in my chair. It was then that I was 99% sure this guy was probably using every black hat trick in the book. Let's just say he was charging enough to put a down payment on a good-sized house.
The first thing that tipped me off was his guarantee. If he is truly offering a guarantee of getting someone's site placed at #1 on Google within weeks... well, he's essentially committing slow robbery. That kind of gurantee is dangerous to make - which is why we don't make it. You could rank #1 on Google one week and fall to #5 the following. Why? For too many reasons to list here.
But the biggest thing that these SEO "experts" miss most often (and I realize I'm generalizing here and that not all of them are like this) is the way the site is built to begin with. If a site is coded properly, has plenty of relevant content (written for humans not search engines), incoming links and decent traffic, it's going to get indexed.
Instead of trying to deceive search engines by pretending your site is relevant, make it relevant. Give us a shout to find out how we can help you with that.