2:43 PM
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Recently I was speaking with a client that was telling me
Google had called him. At first, I
wasn’t alarmed because they have been calling a lot of people trying to get
them to advertise on their Adwords platform.
Next, he told me they wanted to optimize his website for the search
engines with a six-month program. Then
they guaranteed he would be number one in the search engines for his
words. This set off all sorts of red
flags to me, because Google does not perform search engine optimization for
anyone, and there is not a legitimate SEO in the world that would promise you
rankings.
Unethical search engine optimization companies are cold
calling people more than ever. Why? They can now claim themselves as a “Google
Certified Partner”. Here is how it
works. Google has an automated program
that allows you to become a “partner” after very little work. Once completed you are entitled to certain
benefits. One of those benefits is the title of “Google Certified Partner”.
“Hi, this is Abha and I work with Google as a partner. How
are you today?” is what you hear when they call you. It almost sounds like they actually work for
Google, doesn’t it? Well, they don’t,
and the fact that they unethically represent themselves during the initial call
often indicates that their SEO practices are equally as misleading. This is not a good sign, because if your SEO
is using “shady” techniques, then you will be penalized and lose your website’s
traffic.
Many search engine optimizers, especially those out of
foreign countries, actually still use old pieces of software to do SEO work for
them. The problem is that Google has
wizened up to this software and now penalizes people that they think are using
it. One of the most common techniques is
“blog spam”. A while ago, it was possible
for people to use a fifty-dollar program to spam blogs in order to get more
backlinks to their clients’ websites.
Those backlinks would then give their clients higher rankings and
everyone was happy. Google caught onto
this several years ago with an update in their algorithm called “penguin”. Now, if Google sees that your website has many
backlinks from “blog spam”, they will penalize your website or even ban you
from Google. It is likely that if an SEO
company is going to be unethical on the phone, they are probably the type of
company that still uses the SEO practices that can get you banned.
So, in short, do not even bother continuing the conversation
with someone pretending to be from Google.
Google only calls to try to sell Adwords, but most often only to upsell
if you already have an account. If the
person is not calling for this reason, you know right away that they are a
fraud. I spend a great deal of time
helping clients recover from unethical SEO practices these days because of
Fraudsters. While I would love to work
with you, I would prefer to help your business’s web traffic grow instead of
trying to recover it after someone else completely killed it.