SEO

5 Ways to Identify Shady SEO Agencies Brandon Dennis - Dec 27, 2011

 As a marketing and SEO professional, I've talked with countless website owners who have been hood-winked by scammy SEO salesmen into paying high prices for their services. They have horror stories of experiencing fear and intimidation from independent agencies from overseas, who threaten to take their domain or delete their SEO "juice" if they switch service providers. Here are five steps you can take to avoid being scammed by SEO agencies.

1. Make Sure They Rank

When approached by an SEO company, the first thing you should do is test their own website's SEO. While it is unreasonable to expect them to have the top spot for highly competitive keywords, read their website and see what other keywords they are targeting. Then, Google those keywords and see where they rank. An SEO agency may not rank well for "SEO" -- it's way too competitive -- but if they offer services in, say, New Hampshire, they had better be a first-page Google result for "New Hampshire SEO Agency." If they can't rank well for their own keywords, how can you trust them with yours?

Make sure that agencies rank well for keywords related to their own business before hiring them to manage yours.

2. Examine Their Domain Name

Legitimate companies have domains that are short and readable -- Yahoo.com, Apple.com, Amazon.com. Sketchy companies stuff keywords into their domains to artificially rank well for them. Domains like this appear as words-separated-by-hyphens-producing-long-URLs.

One trick SEO companies use to appear legitimate is to buy the perfect domain in your field, hoping you will Google it, see them, think they are good at SEO and hire them. Let's say, for example, that you own a hotel in Little Rock, Arkansas that has a restaurant specializing in gourmet food. Naturally, you want to rank well for the keywords, "Little Rock," "Arkansas," "hotel," and "gourmet restaurant." You found an SEO agency that built a site that ranks well for your keywords, but that doesn't mean they are good at SEO. Their URL may be "little-rock-arkansas-hotel.com/gourmet-restaurant" and so Google gave them a high ranking, thinking the site is relevant to those keywords.

A legitimate agency can make a website rank well without using this trick or trying to manipulate you.

3. Demand Full Disclosure

Be wary of agencies that can't explain their tactics. They'll say things like, "Your website needs to be constantly updated every week. We change and update keywords, meta descriptions and other important things often so that you don't have to. If you fire us, your website will drop off of Google." What are they constantly tweaking? How do you know if they're helping you if they won't tell you what they're doing?

Full disclosure is the rule of thumb. After all, it is your website, and you deserve to know exactly what is happening to it. Make sure any agency you hire is willing and able to explain in detail every step they are taking to ensure that your content is optimized well. This gives you the ability to do your own research on their tactics to verify that they are legitimate.

4. Be Cautious about Back-linking Services

While back-linking is a legitimate SEO tool, some agencies promise hundreds or even thousands of back-links from their private network of "friends." Be careful! Too often the quality of websites where they can seed links is poor, meaning your website gets very little benefit from the links. For example, if you own a website about cupcakes, a thousand links from websites about automotive wing nuts won't help you. Additionally, the PageRank of such websites is often very poor, which gives the link little power to help you.

If possible, obtain backlinks yourself by personally contacting blogs and magazines, offering to write guest blogs, or offer to be interviewed. Or, you can hire a PR firm to publish news and announcements about your company to relevant websites within their network. Establishing relationships produces better results than buying backlinks.

5. Learn about SEO Yourself

With Google continuing to make changes to its search algorithm (Caffeine, Panda and the recent "freshness" update), SEO agencies may mention these changes -- and the steps they have taken to counteract them -- when giving you their pitch. This is a great opportunity to gauge exactly how knowledgeable the agency is. Having a basic understanding of these updates yourself will help you spot black- or gray-hat agents.

For example, if an agency approaches you claiming they can protect you against Google's freshness update, do a little research before responding. You'll soon discover that the freshness update only affects current news events, or websites with timely information about current or upcoming events. Unless you have content that falls into these categories, the freshness update will affect you very little. This information will save you time and money you would waste on an agency trying to optimize your website for freshness.

SEO is important for the health of your website, but the industry is a murky pool you must wade through carefully. If you're not careful, you may fall into a trap that could cost you thousands of dollars. A little bit of research and some caution can go a long way to protect you from shady SEO salesmen.

Brandon Dennis is the marketing manager at buuteeq; the industry experts in hotel website design. He manages the company's SEO, blog and sports some rather snappy suspenders.