SEO advice and services have been offered since Search Engines started crawling the internet. I still see Marketing Agencies offering SEO services that employ tricks that lost relevance almost 2 decades ago.  These SEOs offering low-cost SEO are selling nothing but Snake Oil.  My hope is to educate you on what to look for so you can protect yourself.

Think of your SEO Agency like a personal trainer, a trainer thinks about everything at every level, not just the machines you use in your workout, but also what you eat and your sleep habits.  The goal is ultimate health, not the appearance of strength, but true strength.  This should be the goal of a legitimate SEO Agency - website health that communicates relevance to Google.  SEO Tricks may bring you Google’s temporary attention but nothing that lasts.  Let’s go over some of the tricks that these Bad SEO Agencies employ.

SEO is Fast, Free, and Easy

Our business has been attacking this fallacy since the beginning.  Positive effects from SEO do not occur overnight, the reality is that it takes months to move the needle and start seeing an improvement in organic response.  Google has a reputation to uphold and is not going to award you a high level place on the 1st page overnight.  If anyone tells you that SEO is easy should serve as an immediate warning indicator that most likely their idea of SEO are tactics from decades ago.  As for SEO being free, if you are doing SEO yourself, that does not mean it is free unless you like to work for free.  SEO will take time and thought as you make improvements in your HTML code to help Google best understand what your website is all about.  SEO is important to consider as early as possible and should always fall into your Long-Term Marketing Plan.

Backlinks

SEO becomes a problem when people believe the lie that any backlink is a good backlink. SEO providers feed off this lie and provide ‘Backlink SEO Services’ that are really just software crawling the internet looking for neglected or abandoned websites where backlinks can be created without validation or moderation.  Save your money, these backlinks are no value to the internet, no value to Google, and no value to your business. I would pay $100 for 1 good backlink from a local newspaper article, television studio, or a partner business than I would for 1,000 backlinks on old or abandoned websites.

Keyword Density

Google looks for authenticity meaning that not only does your content need to have relevant keywords that people search for, but it needs to be engaging so a human will be engaged and want to read it.  There is nothing worse than clicking on a page where the density of the keywords are so thick you find it painful to read.  Choosing a primary keyword is important for each page, but as soon as it becomes unreadable, your ideal client will bounce of the page and look for content that is enjoyable to read.