Major SEO Scams & Cons to Look Out in Australian Market
The SEO industry incorporates many uncertainties that can pave the way for scammers to exploit business owners, particularly those who are unconcerned about the way that rankings are attained on search engine pages.
Fake promises and the delivery of impractical or unreal offerings (such as the number one ranking for search engine results pages) can indicate a scam. Many unsolicited emails from unfamiliar companies who can also offer SEO services, but they are simply scamming innocent and uninformed clients.
If you have a website, you have definitely come across one or more of the many SEO scams. Here are the major SEO scams to keep an eye out for and how to identify them before you get into trouble!
Guaranteed Rankings
This is the most trendy scam, doubtlessly because every small business owner wishes to be ranked #1 for their keywords. In reality, most don’t like finding out that it may not be achievable.
Google’s comment on this scam is forthright. “Google never ensures top position in search results or AdWords. Beware of any marketing firms making these kinds of promises.” The competition for your site’s keywords is going to be tough unless you are focusing on especially niche or low volume keywords.
Your competitors didn’t reach the first page overnight. It’s just not possible. Rather, they are allocating thousands of dollars a month to SEO or marketing strategies.
The “guaranteed rankings” will be for keywords that are compatible with your business, but the fact is they have little or no value. When landing you as a client, the scammer will carry out just enough keyword research to identify a nice set of relevant but low-competition and low traffic volume targets that hand out the false appearance of success.
But in the end, your business gets no real developments in traffic, sales, or organic leads from the search channel. It should be noted that there are genuine SEO agencies out there who do offer a money-back policy for their service. However, if you are determined to use them, ensure that the guarantee is based on your targets, not theirs.
Your business ends up ranking for a collection of incompetent keywords, and you are out a bunch of bills. Also, there is the certain possibility that the link building or other attempts used by the scammers to rank you instantaneously for those ineffective keywords could also get your whole website kicked out of Google’s index.
Unsolicited Emails or Contact Forms
Every unsolicited email or contact form you get through your site suggesting SEO services should just be neglected. These can often be with an alarming SEO audit, to cause concern.
If you didn’t actively explore the person or team, you are possibly part of an extensive auto-generated email list. Bots and scrapers gather email addresses and automatically dispatch contact forms on websites. Actual human engagement in these initial connections is rare.
Moreover, this spam mail mostly starts to crop up in your inbox when your site is coming out to rank well in search engines – a hint that your present marketing company’s SEO campaign is delivering results. To keep your website (and your inbox) from this spam, try adding a reCAPTCHA to your forms.
The Google Partner
A company can get a Google Partnership for Google Ads, but SEO? No! To be designated as a Google Partner, you have to establish and complete a Partners company profile, earn Google’s Ads Certification, and match definite spend and performance prerequisites.
Agencies that are Google Partners are appointed an account representative. These Google staff members have names like “Agency Account Strategist'' or “Agency Development Manager.” This doesn’t indicate you have any special relationship with Google as some companies claim, and you can't get insider information on how the algorithm runs. Nor do you get any ranking perks whatsoever.
The Google representative is more or less an account manager who is there to sell more advertising. This alliance has nothing to do with SEO strategies. In fact, Google does not presently have any certifications for SEO and does not deliberately uphold any SEO companies.
SEO Services Offered by Web Design & Development Companies
It looks as though every online marketing enterprise extends some form of SEO services now. Be cautious about these groups of companies, specifically if you look them up and they don’t even have a staff exactly dedicated to SEO.
Many of these agencies probably have an insufficient or primitive understanding of how SEO works and blend it in with their service strategy to stay competitive.
Never fall for that offer. You are not going to receive the same quality of SEO assistance as you would if you had employed someone who is an SEO expert.
Free Trial SEO Services
Some agencies will offer their SEO services for a free trial. All you have to do is hand them admin access to your site and maybe even your credit card details.
Don’t rush towards these offers. Giving a free trial is a terrible attempt to get a business. An accomplished and confident SEO will not be ready to do it upfront or even at all without the right strategy and guidance.
In recent times, scammers have adopted this tactic and other identical offers to insert malware into websites after collecting admin access. Beware of sharing admin access to your site with anybody who isn’t trustworthy.
Moreover, a few days of SEO services won’t bring in any long-term outcomes — if it even works at all.
Companies That Hold Your URL, Social Profiles, Google Analytics, etc
Some companies are more than delighted to establish or take over the hosting for your site. This can even include Google Analytics tracking it and setting up multiple social profiles for the business. Anyhow, in the agreement, you’ll see that they hold the domains, social media accounts, and even the Google Analytics account.
As long as you collaborate with them, this won’t be an issue, but as soon as you leave you’ll understand how terrible this is for your business.
These accounts are resources specific to your business and are some of your most important resources. You should always hold it or have authority over them.
There are different kinds of SEO scams out there and you can fend off most of them by simply not hiring anybody who markets their services via automated email lists.
