The democracy of Planet Google wants to make your SEO life a living hell
SEO, a secret phrase among young business owners, is an exercise in being a bit of an Inspector Clouseau when it comes to unlocking the key to web domination. The mystery surrounding dominating SEO created a ripe environment for many “experts” to place business signs in their front yard and refer to themselves “specialist”.
So, what do these “specialist” do for you $299 a month? They unsuccessfully try use tricks that at one time or another were momentarily successful in gaming the google ranking system.
Let’s be honest for a second. NO one really works at google, do they? How many times have you searched for a phone number to contact them and you can’t find one. Is there any proof that life exists on the Google planet?
Secondly, the programmers (computers or human beings, we are not sure which) are way too intelligent to allow the algorithms to get old and be gamed. For fun, they continually change the algorithms so that “SEO specialist” get frustrated and spend hours in the corner rocking themselves to sleep while crying.
Gaming the system proves impossible now days; as technology becomes more intelligent we become less and less able to “out smart” the system. There is no certain number of times you have to use your keywords in a blog to give it a higher ranking. Ten quality external links will out rank 300 inappropriate links. Buy false web traffic that results in a high bounce rate and you will get dinged for inappropriate content for your audience.
What are signs of a SEO expert trying to game the system?
If you are paying someone for SEO then do a little bit of an Inspector Gadget review on their efforts. Pay attention to these data points to see if their SEO efforts are achieving your goals or if they are trying to outsmart the system.
- Google Analytics: Is your traffic goes up then what does the bounce rate look like? If your content speaks to the individuals who purchase your products AND your website is Conversion Rate Optimized (we like to call it “Return on Investment Optimized”) then you your bounce rate should be low. Bounce rate high? You have an SEO problem.
- Google your website to see what content is associated to your site. Type into google the phrase “site: yourwebsite.com” and look through ALL of the pages. Lots of times when SEO specialist are using sketchy practices then links are connected to your site that has nothing to do with your business. If you see a link that makes you say “What the heck does that have to do with my company” then your SEO company might be doing some bad back linking or using you as a link farm..
Also, many questionable SEO companies will use your website as a “link farm” to provide links to other clients a well. Link farming is a bit like winning the lottery and not paying your taxes….the IRS (Planet Google) is going to find out and you will be fined (de-listed) for breaking the rules.
- Rich Snippet Spam: Do you have pages with content that you see on google, but are hidden pages on your website? Or are your web pages preview snippet completely irrelevant to the content on the page? Yep, that is trying to game the system.
Black Hat SEO tricks are about gaming the system. While that revelation is old news to marketing companies, like RTL Digital Media, many small business owners experienced success with them in the past and still think they are valid today. Don’t let your past success in SEO predict your future failure and be wary of SEO specialist who promises to get you on the first page of google in 2 months for $325/month.
Bad SEO practices can not only waste the money spent on monthly retainer fees, but it can cost you thousands of dollars to get your website out of Google jail. Google can decide to de-list your website if they feel like your website is using unethical ranking practices. Often times, the process of unraveling the rats nets of an SEO mess takes 6-9 months of work to return your website to a good standing. Do you have that amount of time or money to waste trying to save your business.
Always remember, that if Google asses your SEO activities as unethical and illegal according the Google law……there is no one at Google to get you out of jail!
