March 25, 2008 @ 4:29 pm
5 seo/smo services that promise, but don’t deliver
I was browsing a SEO forum and going through my feeds and just saw a bundle of services that, coupled with my reads, got me thinking. There are a lot of BS services out there that guarantee you getting on the first page of Google or getting a storm of visitors on your site. In fact, few deliver what they promised and you might get stood up, a few bucks shorter. Here is a quick breakdown of some services that might not be what they claim to be:
1. Search Engine Submissions - Well, they’re called search engines so what they do is search. Why should you bother submitting your sites when they will index it anyway. In other words, if you built it, they will come! Prices for this top offer range from $5 to even $50, depending on the number of search engines your site gets submitted to (lol). Here’s a random quote from one of these services: When you submit to these 66 search engines, search results will show up in hundreds of other engines. For instance, Google powers the Yahoo search engine. Search listings in Google will show up in Yahoo as well. Why would you pay $299 to Yahoo when you can get listed in their directory by submitting to Google??
2. Directory Submission Service - This might have its purpose, but done carefully and steadily. Firstly, don’t get tricked into PR of the directories - this is only for homepages. Your link will be submitted in an inside page, without any PR, among tens or hundreds of other links. Forget getting PR juice. Secondly, most of directory submissions are done bulk, in a few days. You might trigger some alarm system if you wake up over night with some spammy links. Thirdly, you can avoid this: some submissions require confirmation via email. You can simply confirm these emails once every 2-3 days to ensure your links will be properly distributed. Cheap service, $10-50 for anywhere between 100-500 submission, listings not guaranteed of course. You get the report and over 100 emails asking you to confirm the link.
3. 100 diggs for $x or 100 friends for $x - This is one of my favorite BS service. Ideally, with 100 diggs you get on the frontpage. But these diggs will most likely come from the same IP and will get your submission flagged, burried or even your website banned. 100 friends? Forget it! There are some automated services that add digg users in bulk. But who is gonna add you back? Spam is just one step away! I’ve seen people asking $50 for 100 diggs.
4. Social bookmarking services - Just imagine your story/website submitted to high traffic websites. Ideally, you can get some traffic and inbound links. The real picture is that your bookmark will get submitted by a user with a weak profile, a bad title and in a bad category. Your link will not receive any votes and will probably get lost in the thousands of links submitted daily.
5. SEO service of the Gods - aka frontpage in Google or your money back. Don’t you just love these folks? These guys can guarantee putting your website on Google’s frontpage or in the top 10 for a competitive keyword or your money back. Surprisingly enough (no, not really, I was expecting this) the companies I’ve come across that offer these services are from India. Here’s what some guy got off this kind of service: work to get your ranked, one on one on messenger, guy that works his butt off for you, reports emailed to you on suggestions for onsite changes and of course, no link building budget needed. You only pay the SEO-ers.
Some other services I encountered and I just want to mention since they are just to good to pass:
- Make cash collecting email addresses - that’s how you get spammed
- Custom made sites for $45 that I think come optimized and already ranking
- Traffic sale / 500,000-2,000,000 targeted visitors - this is bound to get your ad platform bursting with cash or Alexa ranking going up
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Posted by Alina Popescu
March 26, 2008 @ 6:59 am
Quite interesting article! I agree most of the services you’ve mentioned here are really promising the sky and the moon and never delivering. Except for social bookmarking sites. There’s a different story there. It depends indeed on your readers, your network of friends and what you described as a true nightmare can indeed happen. But it doesn’t always happen
If you join the right communities and learn a little about each of them, you can actually have great results.
On the other hand, if you refer to services swearing to get you x traffic/clicks on your ads out of social media in no time, that’s a different story. Social media allows little control over content and results. One can merely hope to influence a little
Posted by MikeTek
March 26, 2008 @ 8:30 am
Oh these are the worst. I used to work for a company that offered search engine submissions AND “guaranteed page 1 rankings.” It was pathetic, and I had to be a representative of it to pay my bills for almost a year!
Here’s how they did it:
-They guaranteed “50 Page One Google Rankings in Six Months” or your money back.
-They did some minor SEO on the site and constantly monitored the analytics for new keywords - obscure, long tail phrases, off-topic keywords, whatever came in from search engine referrals
-They added any unique keyword, even if it referred one visit in six months, to rank checking software (IBP in this case)
-They reported the “new page one rankings” as growth to the clients, most of whom were, unfortunately, not web savvy and were completely unaware of how they were being scammed
Of course, any client who took at look at what really mattered - their traffic, or, even better, their ROI - quickly realized that the growing number of page one rankings didn’t amount to jack squat.
And the agency is still pushing this! It’s pathetic…wish I could out them here so we could all share a laugh, but I don’t want to identify the company and get involved in some kind of slander case. Needless to say I’m relieved not to work there anymore.
Posted by windyridge
March 26, 2008 @ 10:15 am
I agree with most of what you said. Some social networks work pretty well for me. The lesser well known ones, such as Hypediss, Hugg and ILikeTotallyLoveit get me some decent traffic for my gadget blog. Forget the big guys tho’. And I am one of the top users in Bloggingzoom, but that doesn’t get me much traffic either. Social networks depend a lot on your niche. If you are into SEO and blogging many are fantastic for that. But I have a gadget blog, a farm and family blog and a blog about New York. They don’t lend themselves well to the big social networks.
Posted by maxyRO
March 26, 2008 @ 10:21 am
When you have niche website, it’s better to target specific comunities, not mass audience such as digg or reddit. Nonetheless, occasionally you can try your luck with the big guys, by posting a really good piece of content. There are few niches where a linkbait can’t be done.
@MikeTek: thanks for the inside scoop.
Posted by Socially Declined
March 26, 2008 @ 12:27 pm
I totally agree….Social Bookmarks aren’t as effective as so called “experts” believe. Why should you do the work when you can add the icon and have others do the work for you. That is what differentiates a senor from a junior.
Posted by seo noob
April 28, 2008 @ 6:15 am
this article is very interesting find some idea reliable but some are not. i agree about social bookmarking it is true that you can gain traffics if you submit you link into it. thanks anyways for this very informative article.
Posted by Donna
May 13, 2008 @ 10:47 pm
Interesting and informative article. It is nice that you just come out and say it… BS services. Instantly made me want to read the whole article!
I don’t know what’s funnier, the search engine submission services or the SEO services. Really interesting to hear MikeTek’s inside story. When doing keyword research I often see bizarre long tail keyword phrases that I can’t imagine anyone really typing in. Lots of keywords repeated. It baffled me for a while and then I realized it was probably some BS SEO ‘expert’, with automated software, creating a false long tail keyword that of course no other site would ever optimize for - because they don’t make sense. Then hey, just put that fake long tail in the meta tags and presto… a #1 ranking in Google…. for something no real person ever searches on.
Posted by seema
July 23, 2008 @ 4:39 am
Hi
Your blog is very informative n helpful .. thanks…..keep it up.
http://www.seostep.net
Posted by Play uk bingo
July 23, 2008 @ 9:05 am
Very good and informative. I once fell for many of the ’services’ you mentioned. Seems silly now, looking back lol.