It’s a term used by web developers and even people who don’t understand it well, used to describe “adding keywords” and “ranking” but there is a lot more to it then putting a keyword here and there and seeing if you rank for it.
A new client of ours came to us with a feeling they weren’t really getting their moneys worth and boy were they right. Over a year of monthly payments and a quick 5 minutes tells me they’ve been paying for almost nothing, and the part they were paying for isn’t even close to being helpful.
Some Red Flags Found
The report with rankings listed number 1 ranks for keywords nobody searches for.
The descriptions, titles and headings didn’t contain any of the target keywords
Backlink report shows 9 consecutive months of almost no backlinks being created to the domain.
Website content was not organized or linking within the site using proper anchor text.
I don’t know exactly what the ‘value’ was they were getting besides some admin work monitoring bad keywords and offering a Dynamic SEO service.
You have to be careful when you’re told you will get “SEO” or developers/companies say “we’ll SEO your website”.
Ranking for unsearched keywords is easy. You get a report back talking about your improved ranking and keywords that ‘look’ like they would be good ones for your business yet nobody ever searches for those keywords.
Be very careful about guarantees of companies offering quick number 1 rankings. They’re promise is easy as long as you don’t care what keyword it is they’re going to rank you for. Being number 1 in a race of only 1 is useless. Being number 1 in a race of 10,000? Now that is what counts.
Ask some companies/developers what their definition of “SEO” is and they’ll tell you it’s about making sure you have proper keywords on your website. Is that all that’s required? Absolutely not, it’s far more specific and complex than putting keywords all over the place. Yet this is about all some of these companies do and they’re charging and arm and a leg for it!
Unfortunately this trend will continue as it has for a long time. That’s why one of Devcourt Media’s specialties lies in SEO and educating our clients on what we do, no hiding, no hoping you don’t know and don’t ask. You can see some of our results and browse through our seo packages.
