Search Engine Optimisation Web Log (BLOG)
Editor: Matt Paines

| This News Blog is dedicated to bringing news, information and innovations targeting the Search Engine Optimisation industry.

The search ranking sharks are circling

Unbelievable how people can be lead into spending money on thin air. Within the last couple of days I've had a call from a guy that falls into this category. A perfectly likable bloke, as much as I could tell from a half hour telephone conversation. He started by explaining he didn't have a great deal of money to spend. But realising he had to market his web site to gain any results he'd bought into a "guaranteed" placement scheme that he'd found via an email he'd received.

You know the kind £100/month (contracted for 12 months) and they'll put you into the top of Google. Well not quite, top of Adwords to be more specific. And the search term they'll use, well to the uninitiated it looks perfectly relevant. Indeed so much so that we had to check it ourselves (amazing what a difference a plural can make). But the search term that they were now ranking for (in pay per click) had no impressions recorded (searches), and hence there could be no click thoughs, so they were not spending a penny to keep the client in that position - basically you're paying these so called Internet Marketers £100/month for 5 mins initial set up work on the project, they were true to their word - they did supply a top placement in Google but that is the point..

So the moral to the story is, paying for rankings is not the way to market your web site. Whilst ranking for the right search terms will generate traffic, ranking for the wrong search terms will only waist time, effort and more importantly money.

If you are considering using a "guaranteed top ten ranking in Google" cowboy, two clichés come to mind, unless you want to be party to their retirement plan whilst they sit back and take the money. In Internet marketing and search engine optimisation
there is no such thing a s a free lunch,
and if it looks to good to be true…it probably is.

If you have a similar story you want to share, I'm sure our other readers would like to hear your experience.

M.P

Comment:

30.07.2007 Carl Thomas
I responded to one of these guaranteed rankings emails, they promised 1000's of links to my site. All the pages were the same but on different domains. Not only have I wasted my money(they won't give it back) but now 8 months have passed and I'm no further forward. Carl