Thu 3 Jan 2008
The Unethical SEO Company Handbook - 11 Quick Tips
Posted by Shaun AndersonWhen considering buying seo services, be careful. We may have been voted one of the best seo companies in Scotland on results across the 3 major search engines but nobody at Hobo or any of the other seo companies anywhere in the world ‘knows conclusively how Google works‘.
Consider this quote from a Google employee;
“someone walked up to me and pretended like he wanted to bribe me: $500,000 for a 1st place ranking. I turned him down, because no one can guarantee a #1 ranking — not even me.”Matt Cutts
We make websites better, sticking as closely as possible to search engine guidelines. No tricks, just 8 years experience making and promoting websites. This is all that’s needed to get better placement in Google, Yahoo and MSN. This is considered ‘ethical’ seo.
Some companies don’t however, and will encourage you to buy their services with nonsense like;
- The “It’s all about Meta-Tags” Hustle
- The “We Build Fake Directories & Networks For You” Slight Of Hand
- The “We cannot show you results for clients as it is 100% confidential” Play
- The “We KNOW how Google works” Scam
- The “Google Algorithm Beating Strategy” Spin
- The “We don’t rank for any “seo” terms because we don’t want to - We use Adwords” Excuse
- The “19531 Number 1 positions for our clients” Comedy
- The “LSI Optimisation” Total Misdirection & Downright Lie
- The “Toolbar Page Rank Is Everything” Con
- The “Top Ten Guaranteed Rankings” Lie
- The “Submit To 75,000 Search Engines” Joke
There’s more to look out for, but if a company ‘guarantees’ search engine placement through seo, it’s a scam. There are no guarantees in SEO - it’s hard, logical work, with no magic bullet.
There are things you can do in seo to virtually guarantee more traffic from Google. We can help you devlop a long term strategy for successful penetration in all search engines.
PS - Always think twice before being duped by seo service companies who spam your email inbox with unsolicited junk mail designed specifically to target ignorant business owners. Even Google gets emails like these. It’s something Hobo has never done, and as an ethical seo company, will never will do.
Watch Out!
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And don’t forget the enterprise that offers the service only by 1€…Great article!
Comment by Consultora Seo — January 3, 2008 @ 10:39 am
I have just published a post on my blog that I think you will find amusing:
http://www.seoco.co.uk/blog/2008/01/03/the-seo-magic-beans/
These two posts were very well timed.
Comment by David Eaves — January 3, 2008 @ 11:06 am
Get me $500k in escrow and I’ll get you a #1 keyword ranking, or real damn close, for fairly high level keywords. I’m not talking about “s*x” or anything else ridiculously fought for but for highly competitive keywords, you bet. And it will be SEO, just the kind you don’t like - and completely and totally undetectable - but none of the white hats ever believe that.
Comment by Sam Freedoms Internet Marketing Controversy Blog — January 3, 2008 @ 8:04 pm
@Sam, we should talk
I am very open-minded!
@ David - Yeah that’s a great post!
Comment by Shaun — January 3, 2008 @ 9:11 pm
Amen to that.
Comment by Tanner Christensen — January 3, 2008 @ 9:12 pm
Thanks for the comment Tanner!
Comment by Shaun Anderson — January 3, 2008 @ 9:14 pm
Great Handbook Shaun. Maybe we should come up with some more stuff man.
Comment by Webnauts — January 5, 2008 @ 5:21 am
As you know, there’s more… and I am game!
Comment by Shaun Anderson — January 5, 2008 @ 5:38 am
Here is the next one:
Advertising a ‘priority submit’ to Google.
Comment by Webnauts — January 5, 2008 @ 5:41 am
I hear u
Anybody else want to add anything?
Comment by Shaun Anderson — January 5, 2008 @ 8:54 am
If only the clients would read these articles
Comment by Old School — January 7, 2008 @ 9:56 pm
Cheers Anthony - everybody is free to link to it.
Comment by Shaun Anderson — January 7, 2008 @ 10:01 pm
We have a company here in Australia which guarantees top spot in Google for ANY keyword for $4,400.
I’m tempted to chuck $8,800 at them to get me top spots for “Buy Viagra” and “Free Porn”.
(Only if they offer me a money back guarantee of course - how could I lose?
)
Comment by Stu — January 19, 2008 @ 12:13 pm
Go for it Stu! Throw in Loan, Sex, Paris Hilton & Holiday while you are at it!
Comment by Shaun Anderson — January 19, 2008 @ 1:18 pm
Haha thanks Shaun,
You gonna help with the startup capital?
Comment by Stu — January 19, 2008 @ 1:25 pm
Thank you. This is a great handbook.
Comment by IFA Greenock — January 27, 2008 @ 10:31 am
Great post and very true. It’s frustrating seeing customers getting tricked by these SEO cowboys that promise that ‘magic bullet’. As with anything in life, it does take a bit of elbow grease to get something back.
Comment by Tom — January 31, 2008 @ 10:46 pm
For $500k without blackhat techniques its possible to get #1 rankings for proper competitive terms, and with some domain age even the most competitive. At $100 per hour that’s 5000 hours labour, while i know prices differ and many charge a lot more than that its a good gauge
Comment by William - Neutralize — February 13, 2008 @ 3:27 pm
Working for an online retailer, I get calls from “SEO experts” on a pretty regular basis. I’ve heard all these lies and then some. I absolutely love it when they start telling me about some whacked out long-tail keyword they ranked a client for and then I can get out a KW volume tool like Wordtracker and say, “Hmm…that’s funny, according to Wordtracker, nobody’s even looking for that phrase…”
Comment by Stefanie — February 19, 2008 @ 7:56 pm
I get this too. What really niggles me is if these guys work for an SEO company, then why are they relying on email and phone marketing. its like admitting barefaced that they can’t do it and therefore have to opt for expensive outbound sales campaigns.
Btw, any chance that this blog will ever be dofollow?
Comment by Chris — March 15, 2008 @ 11:02 am
Chris, this blog is a dofollow blog, although it depends on how many comments you’ve made….. and I sorta keep that number to myself.
Comment by Shaun — April 30, 2008 @ 7:52 pm