Watching Out For Internet Marketing Scams
If It Looks Too Good To Be True...
This morning I decided to do a quick Google check on popular internet marketing search terms, to see what the latest scams are. To be honest, not much is new. The same old tired scams are still all over the place. Here are my favorites -- the ones to avoid like the plague!
Scam # 1: Instant Submission Of Your Site To Search Engines
Will this one never go away? Here is a direct quote from one firm: "We'll carefully submit your website URL to over 800,000 search engines and directories immediately!" The fact is, such mass submissions, while they may have made sense a few years ago, are now completely unecessary. Over 95% of all internet search engine traffic is driven by Google, Yahoo, MSN, and AskJeeves. Who are the other 799,996 search engines? The only thing this will do for your website is increase the amount of spam you receive. You actually don't even need to submit to the big engines -- just get a couple of links from established sites pointing to your site, and the search engines will find you.
Scam # 2: Top Google Ranking -- Guaranteed!
No-one, and I mean no-one, can guarantee your website a top ranking on Google (or Yahoo, MSN, or AskJeeves). They can try, but they can't guarantee it. Here is a quick reality check: there are ten spots on the main search results on page 1 of Google. Let's say you want to rank on page 1 for the term "mortgage broker." So do 5,000 other mortgage brokers. If even just 50 of those brokers all went to the same vendor for this incredible deal, how are they going to fit 50 mortgage brokers onto page 1 of Google? They're not. They're going to start persuading you that it's good to rank for offbeat phrases such as "house, condo, apartment discount mortgage brokers." Well sure, if no-one else is trying to get ranked for exactly that term, maybe they could get you onto page 1 (although not for long). But -- why would you want to? When it comes to top search engine placement for the keyword terms that matter, no-one can guarantee you a page one ranking. It's a sales gimmick, and frequently, it's fraud.
Scam # 3: Get 3,000 plus backlinks for only $19.95/month
That's an actual offer from one vendor, pushing this scam through Google Adwords. Why is it a scam? It's worse than useless, that's why. No-one doubts that high-quality links to your site are crucial for good internet marketing. And there is also no doubt that link-building has become the toughest task in internet marketing today, as Google and Yahoo! seek to clamp down on artificial, paid, reciprocal, or otherwise "tainted" links to your site. Any scheme that offers 3,000 links almost overnight just screams out for getting your site penalized for participating in a link farm or other linking scheme. That's right, penalized, as is downgraded or even dropped from a search engine. The correct, and much more difficult road is to build valid, one-way links, one at at time, from reputable sites. Done properly, it will really pay off.
In internet marketing, as with any product or service, if it looks too good to be true, it probably is! There is no "get-rich-quick" magic bullet. Internet marketing is about careful, well-planned, and well-executed strategies, implemented on a continual basis.
This morning I decided to do a quick Google check on popular internet marketing search terms, to see what the latest scams are. To be honest, not much is new. The same old tired scams are still all over the place. Here are my favorites -- the ones to avoid like the plague!
Scam # 1: Instant Submission Of Your Site To Search Engines
Will this one never go away? Here is a direct quote from one firm: "We'll carefully submit your website URL to over 800,000 search engines and directories immediately!" The fact is, such mass submissions, while they may have made sense a few years ago, are now completely unecessary. Over 95% of all internet search engine traffic is driven by Google, Yahoo, MSN, and AskJeeves. Who are the other 799,996 search engines? The only thing this will do for your website is increase the amount of spam you receive. You actually don't even need to submit to the big engines -- just get a couple of links from established sites pointing to your site, and the search engines will find you.
Scam # 2: Top Google Ranking -- Guaranteed!
No-one, and I mean no-one, can guarantee your website a top ranking on Google (or Yahoo, MSN, or AskJeeves). They can try, but they can't guarantee it. Here is a quick reality check: there are ten spots on the main search results on page 1 of Google. Let's say you want to rank on page 1 for the term "mortgage broker." So do 5,000 other mortgage brokers. If even just 50 of those brokers all went to the same vendor for this incredible deal, how are they going to fit 50 mortgage brokers onto page 1 of Google? They're not. They're going to start persuading you that it's good to rank for offbeat phrases such as "house, condo, apartment discount mortgage brokers." Well sure, if no-one else is trying to get ranked for exactly that term, maybe they could get you onto page 1 (although not for long). But -- why would you want to? When it comes to top search engine placement for the keyword terms that matter, no-one can guarantee you a page one ranking. It's a sales gimmick, and frequently, it's fraud.
Scam # 3: Get 3,000 plus backlinks for only $19.95/month
That's an actual offer from one vendor, pushing this scam through Google Adwords. Why is it a scam? It's worse than useless, that's why. No-one doubts that high-quality links to your site are crucial for good internet marketing. And there is also no doubt that link-building has become the toughest task in internet marketing today, as Google and Yahoo! seek to clamp down on artificial, paid, reciprocal, or otherwise "tainted" links to your site. Any scheme that offers 3,000 links almost overnight just screams out for getting your site penalized for participating in a link farm or other linking scheme. That's right, penalized, as is downgraded or even dropped from a search engine. The correct, and much more difficult road is to build valid, one-way links, one at at time, from reputable sites. Done properly, it will really pay off.
In internet marketing, as with any product or service, if it looks too good to be true, it probably is! There is no "get-rich-quick" magic bullet. Internet marketing is about careful, well-planned, and well-executed strategies, implemented on a continual basis.
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2 Comments:
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Best way I've found to build backlinks is to painstakingly slog through the long, slow process of web directory entries.
Only a few are PR 6s, but there are a goodly number of 5s and 4s out there. All useful.
--Jack Payne
www.sixhrs.com
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