Google Rankings SCAM
One of the more popular SCAMS going around is the good old, “we can get your website to the 1st place on Google, Bing, or Yahoo.”
Here is a sample of an email associated with this type of SCAM.
First, if it were that easy to get you placed #1, why wouldn’t everyone do it? I mean, imagine my business model and the number of happy clients I would have if I could promise you #1 and deliver on that promise every single time. And if I can promise you #1, then some others would know the secret, and well, there is only one #1, right? Imagine the ugly bidding wars that would take place if that were true. I mean, only one real estate agent in New York City can be #1, right?
One thing I find so funny in these emails is that they almost ALWAYS list Yahoo! as if it were even the slightest bit relevant in modern search. Hell, Yahoo isn’t, nor has it ever been, a search engine; it was a search directory (it didn’t have a crawler or spider in the traditional sense, as Google does). Yahoo obtained its data manually. Not only that, but Yahoo has been dead and irrelevant since 2009, when Its search engine began using Bing to power its results.
Deep Dive
Now let’s dive into the meat of this SCAM. The scam relies on small businesses not understanding that no company other than Google can make any promises about Google. Meaning, Google is the only company that can make a promise on its own behalf.
So claiming that I can get you placed on Google, period, is a lie in itself. Now, I personally have only had one company that we were working with that I had trouble getting placed on Google, but that is a story for another time. In general, if you are playing by all the rules (White Hat SEO), you should not have any trouble getting a website placed on Google. But getting it on the first page or in the first spot is another story. In fact, most of these SCAM companies will use Black Hat SEO (not following the rules) to get you listed very quickly and placed fairly high in the results. They collect their money and run, and in a few days or weeks, your placement comes crashing down, and getting back on top again will be extremely difficult, if not nearly impossible.
With all that said, Google is the only company that can promise you will appear first, and it doesn’t offer that as a service. In fact, doing so would hurt Google’s search engine, as its entire goal is to provide relevant and accurate results, and allowing a company to buy the first spot goes against those principles. This means you have to rely on an SEO company to get your listing ranked well, and they can’t make that promise either, since Google keeps exactly how they rank search results a big secret. In fact, there is an entire industry researching and speculating on exactly how Google search works. With that said, it is impossible for anyone outside of Google to guarantee a spot in the search results.
If you decide, however, that you want to toss your money out the window and take the risk by going with one of the Black Hat SEO companies, we wish you the best of luck.
If you want it done correctly, give us a call today 540-479-6350
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