July 9th, 2011 : The Top 3 Abuses Of SEO Companies On Website Owners

The Top 3 Abuses Of SEO Companies On Website Owners

If you're looking for a legitimate SEO company that can bring you more customers from the internet, then it's important to know the most common scams. In this article, you'll discover the top 3 most common. Once you know these, you'll be protected from 90% of abuses. It will also help you choose between SEO companies competing for your business.

1. Holding Your Intellectual Property "Hostage"

The most common abuse is allowing the SEO company to register all your intellectual property in their own name. Specifically, make sure your domain name, hosting, and website content are registered and copyrighted to you. Very often, it's easy for unscrupulous companies to get away with this abuse because most business owners are busy people. They want most aspects of the work done for them.

However, these are your business assets in cyberspace. Do not give them over to anyone else. It's the same as owning physical property. You wouldn't allow a real estate agent to buy your house in their name, would you? You can let other people access the property, but make sure your name is on the title and you always have spare keys. The keys in this case are passwords.

To prevent this type of abuse, ask the SEO company, up front if they will register everything in your name or theirs. Reputable SEO companies should not hesitate to tell you everything will be registered in your name. Also, insist to have access to all the passwords. You should not have to ask them for permission to access your own online assets.

2. Bait And Switch Tactics

Another abuse is a modern technological application of the very old scam - the bait-and-switch. Typically, these tactics work by offering you an extremely low price up front. When you compare the cost to competitors, you're very tempted to make your decision on price alone. When you don't know any better, you're more likely to use price and justify it by telling yourself you're keeping expenses low. That's what they're counting on.

Later on, they make up for it on the back end. Once your website is performing well and you're enjoying an influx of new customers and business, that's when the extortion begins. It's important to note that legitimate SEO companies may offer more services once you're enjoying results, and that's fine. The difference is that you have a choice with a legitimate offer.

With abusive tactics, you won't have a choice. They will essentially threaten you to pay up or else. How do they get away with it? Essentially, they give you access to all your business assets. However, the difference comes with how customers are sent to your website.

They may create another website that collects the customers and then forwards the leads to your website. If you refuse to pay, they simply switch off the "shadow" website that they own. In very severe cases, unscrupulous SEO companies have even sent the new customers to competitors' websites.

How do you protect against this tactic? Make sure it's stated in the contract that all search engine "traffic" goes directly to your website with no intermediary sites owned by the SEO company.

3. Popularity Scams

Part of how the internet works is by popularity. When other sites link to your website, it counts as a "vote." Most search engines, like Google, check for how many other sites link to yours. If many sites are telling people to visit your site, then Google assumes your website should show up higher in the search results.

Some SEO companies abuse this by placing links to their own sites or the sites of higher-paying clients. Don't allow the SEO company to load up your site with too many links pointing outside your website. Essentially, you want more links pointing to yours. Check each page on your website. If there are any irregular pages that don't seem to serve a purpose, then it could be what's called a "doorway" page. These are normally loaded with keywords to send out "votes" to other websites.

Watch out for these common abuses and keep them in mind when choosing an SEO company. A good one will be upfront and clear about everything.

Tags: Local Internet Marketing, Local Internet Advertising

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