Don’t be bamboozled by SEO claims!
There are lots of people claiming top rankings at the moment… especially for a new product that’s just launched.
Look, I don’t want to single anyone out for some “bad press”, but I do want to stress a point…
If someone presents a “search engine top ten” claim you need to be skeptical.
It’s not easy to get top ten search engine positions for competitive phrases… especially overnight. Google will “know” of several top websites that are likely to get the top spots for ALL high traffic searches in their niche. I mean, c’mon, if you type “make money” into Google, you’ll most likely find high PageRank pages and OLD sites… ones that Google (effectively) TRUSTS.
If your site appears online, you may get crawled quickly… (A site I built recently has been visited by Google’s bots over 30,000 times in November) and even indexed quickly (the same site has 4,000 pages listed in the Google index already), but DON’T expect to get top search engine rankings for high traffic phrases quickly.
So what’s the “truth” behind these claims of achieving top-ranking pages overnight?
Simple. The phrases are NOT competitive.
Take, for example, “home business arlington”. Now, if you type that into Google, without the quotes, you get 3.62 MILLION results.
Does that REALLY reflect the number of pages that are about home businesses in Arlington? No. It reflects the pages that Google knows about where the words, “home”, “business” and “Arlington” appear on the same page. It could be pages about someone in Arlington, Australia selling their mobile home because they went out of business. Well, you get my point. Most of the results are NOT 100% relevant.
Now do the same search with the quotes, and you’ll see FOUR results.
Quite a difference, right?
Let’s forget the arguments about how people don’t search using the quotes… the reason we are using the quotes is to compare the “pin-point accurate results” with the headline figure of “total results”.
Here’s the 24-million dollar question… how difficult would it be to create a page that ranked number ONE for the phrase “home business arlington” when people type it into Google, without quotes?
Answer: easier than falling off a log.
Let’s take a contrary view… the phrase “home business” without quotes… 1.7 BILLION results… with quotes… 4.26 Million.
How difficult would it be to create a page that ranked number ONE for the phrase “home business” when people type it into Google, without quotes?
Answer: seriously difficult.
In summary… to VALIDATE someone’s claim about top search engine rankings, do yourself a favor and do an identical search but include the quotes… that will show you whether or not they’ve beaten real competiton.
November 29th, 2006 at 5:59 pm
Absolutely right Neil. And what people should also realise is that long term, repeat, traffic from the search engines is a result of concerted effort and graft, not trickery.
November 29th, 2006 at 6:04 pm
Hi Neil,
Nice article….
Give us some tips on how to rank well…
Anish
November 29th, 2006 at 6:13 pm
Right On!
There are many different things that go into getting page ranking… and, just like making money online, it is not an overnight process. It takes time to build up that page rank and position.
November 29th, 2006 at 6:39 pm
Neil, this is the type of info you are famous for, accurate, concise and useful. Keep up the good work.
Charles
November 29th, 2006 at 7:17 pm
yes there were a lot of these crazy claims about a product some months ago.
Don’t forget about links pointing to a page - if the link has “neil” in it but it doesnt appear on the page, the page will still rank for “neil”
–
Just for fun, type “liar”into google.co.uk
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You can always look up the bids for a phrase in Overture etc - if there are no bids, well, it’s not competitive.
November 29th, 2006 at 7:21 pm
Thanks Neil. Insightful. That certainly will be a useful deflector shield.
You said - “DON’T expect to get top search engine rankings for high traffic phrases quickly.” So true! Like many will do, I went off and checked our key words out.
We’re finally up there in Google’s top 10 but it’s taken us over 12 months. Like 751 million other possibles we have keywords “internet” and “video” (without the commas it’s still 1.5million) , so we’re pretty damn pleased with the outcome, but you’re right, it took alot of time.
Cheers Neil.
Guy
November 29th, 2006 at 7:22 pm
I am always looking for information that advises readers effectively and honestly.. Especially, on the SEO CLAIMS issue. I just read another one of those trickery sales adverts showing how a particular company has indexed 8 times all on the first page of Google’s search. Anyone can do that when a specific search term is input… But, so many are not aware of this.. Keep the public aware.. B. Robert
November 29th, 2006 at 7:25 pm
It’s a good point, and on similar lines I often receive emails from SEO businesses trying to sell their wares by telling me half-truths about my apparent poor link-popularity on Google. They don’t like it when I tell them to try it another way, or to also use Yahoo to check in-bound links. I’m no mug!
Any clues as to the product you were referring to? I know of two very recent products which are related to traffic generation.
Cheers
Jim
November 29th, 2006 at 7:42 pm
Thanks for the heads-up!
April
November 29th, 2006 at 7:43 pm
Hi Neil,
Good points and very valid. If you don’t mind me saying but it would have been far more helpful if you had “named names” as it were. After all if you felt that the claims were/are misleading then why not say so. It’s hard enough as it is sorting out the hyped up offers from the really good ones, so any insider info would be very useful. Personally I subscribe to a site called…http://www.whatscrapandwhatsnot.com/ and the site rocks.
I think you’ll find that the product that Neil was refering to is Traffic Geyser…..I could be wrong…:-)
Regards
Peter
Regards
Peter
November 29th, 2006 at 7:50 pm
Well spoken, as usual.
-mb
November 29th, 2006 at 8:05 pm
Neil,
One other thing……is this absolutely corect?….
======================================
Here’s the 24-million dollar question… how difficult would it be to create a page that ranked number ONE for the phrase “home business arlington” when people type it into Google, without quotes?
Answer: easier than falling off a log.
======================================
Do you not mean “with quotes”? If you do mean “without quotes” then can you advise me on seo please? Surely it’s much more difficult to get a a site listed for a term without quotes rather than with quotes? You seem to imply the reverse? Please advise. Peter
November 29th, 2006 at 8:06 pm
Hi Neil, Is the IBP tool a good investment or not? They claim they can get my site to the top 10 position.
November 29th, 2006 at 8:18 pm
Hi Neil,
Thanks for giving us great info as usual.
November 29th, 2006 at 8:23 pm
Hi Peter,
I do mean without quotes because, as I was trying to point out in the post, most of the results aren’t relevant to home business Arlington. Any page you made around that phrase would rank highly… quotes or no quotes.
Neil.
November 29th, 2006 at 8:40 pm
Hi Sandra,
I don’t know what the IBP tool is… although the claim doesn’t mean a whole lot without details.
Neil.
November 29th, 2006 at 8:50 pm
I agree, in fact the days of the SEO’ers are numbered. Google, like anyone else is getting smarter. They are getting more meticulous about “content” and relativity to the search. This is a great thing. Those of us who want to build sites with quality content have a better opportunity for success as the tricks of the SBO’ers are getting harder and harder to get past the search engines.
November 29th, 2006 at 9:19 pm
An excellent, if cagey, article. Finally SEO is moving toward quality and relevance. All the best SEO results we’ve achieved at EditRed have involved sustained hard work and vision. Promises of automated overnight success are pandering to those who are either new to the game or finding it hard to hold onto a coherent vision of what they are trying to achieve online.
Thanks for sharing.
Chris
November 29th, 2006 at 9:47 pm
Hi Chris,
Cagey, lol. I haven’t heard that word used in a while.
Thanks for your comments.
Neil.
November 29th, 2006 at 10:45 pm
There are also other kind of claims I often see for ***very*** competitive search terms and telling potential customers that’s easy and fast for them to get also the same results if they buy their product… and I always think to myself: another one misleading people!
For a ***very*** competitive search term the pages on top positions must have thousands of links that were achieved for a LONG period (sometimes a few years) and usually those sites are in constant update with fresh content ad fresh inbound links. But this type of information they never tell people about it - they never say: “we got these top positions because we have XX thousands of links that were achieved for the past X years and we update our site regularly and get XX fresh links per week - we even have a few dozens/hundreds of sites/blogs we created to get those links.”
So, don’t get also fooled for those claims for very competitive search terms. They are *never* easy and *never* fast - it often takes a lot time and work.
November 30th, 2006 at 12:11 am
Right on Neil!
What really works is finding the high paying keywords
that have little or no competition. A PR 5 site can
get placed in a few days in Google for mid/range
or lower range keywords. Those with 100 - 5000 hits
a month.
Keyword Elite is the best Keyword Research tool
I have found for finding these valuable keywords.
String all of these together in the form
a Long Tail and you’re in business.
Works for me and my sites!
Titus
www.bizwaremagic.com
November 30th, 2006 at 12:54 am
Hi Neil,
I agree that you should name the ‘names’ you think is misleading others. I was sent ‘tons’ recently to buy their software claiming the same things . Is so tricky . We need to be aware and warn. The newbies can be spendng $$$ and get false hope (e.g. me :p )This is so not good ;(
Anyway keep up your good work. All the best .
newbies..
November 30th, 2006 at 1:11 am
Neil,
Point taken….
Still amazed thet Super Google cannot understand that when someone googles :
home business arlington
with quotes or no quotes, that the searcher is actually looking for home business arlington and not:
home, or business, or home business, or arlington
I would have thought they would have gotten around that by now.
Peter
November 30th, 2006 at 2:01 am
Hi Neil
Great article you have created and straight to the point. You are very good at writing about a topic that many think is extremely difficult and almost impossible to get a proper listing. If people just go after “the long tail” it is not so difficult to find good and relevant keywords that can provide your website with good listings, and almost turn your themed text into a internet traffic machine that will certainly give a good response and provide a lot of visitors.
Thanks Neil!
Peder Andersen
www.panconpro.com
November 30th, 2006 at 4:35 am
Neil,
I believe anyone who has been on the internet for awhile feels SKEPTICAL about “a lot of offers” today. Your article targets one area and provides good examples.
However, since some are asking/suggesting that you list those who are promoting this … I’d suggest you keep that “LIST” of names to yourself. You don’t want someone to institute legal action against you. (Suing!)
Good article and comments - thanks Neil! - Daryl
November 30th, 2006 at 6:21 am
Good Point Daryl,
Anyone who has been on the internet can probably figure out who the scammers are. There are a few who are relentless. I’m building my 2nd site right now, I’ve been working on it for almost 5 months, and I get a lot of “mail” from a few of the same people promising me “trick to high traffic” and “$24,000 in 24 hours”. Neil doesn’t have to name names, they hang themselves. If you get something from one of these people and then do a search from a number of different angles, it’s amazing how many of them are not even making the first page of a search.
November 30th, 2006 at 9:33 am
Hi Daryl and James,
Thanks for understanding my point about naming people. If I had said, “Mr X”, then the focus of the article would have shifted from the differences between competitive and uncompetitive phrases to the person I was talking about. I didn’t want to have people lose the point of the article. Plus, it’s not just one person using this trick… it’s many different people. I’d rather just educate people as to how to see through the “marketing” claims. Yes, you can reach the top of the search engines quickly… but not for competitive phrases… the ones that get lots of traffic.
Neil.
November 30th, 2006 at 12:31 pm
James and Daryl,
No-one has ever been sued for reviewing a product or the claims made by the product creator. You only get sued for making defamatory remarks or libelous comments. Just about any magazine or newpaper contains product reviews of some kind.
The reason why most “gurus” do not want to name names is because if they do, they will get cut out of the next joint venture offering or the next big product launch, which will reduce the “guru”’s income. It is very rare that you will ever see a “guru” name names and that is why.
If you want some genuine and honest comments on products and the like, read Martin Avis’s newsletter, which is excellent. His latest newsletter points out the possible problems in using a program called Forum Equalizer.
Thankfully there are still some people around who are prepared to speak up and say what’s on their mind, without worrying whether they will be part of the next big product launch or not.
Best wishes
Peter
November 30th, 2006 at 12:37 pm
Hi Neil
you mke a very valid point and, as a previous post said, it is amazing how some of these people claiming to get you on page 1 of Google are nowhere to be found when you do a search for their site.
Often their sites will have no page Google rank either, so if they can’t deliver the goods for thir own sites, how do they expect us to believe that they can do it for the rest of us?
With the engines getting smarter all the time (latent semantic indexing etc), then it will be good content that should win out over trickery in the end.
regards
Roy
November 30th, 2006 at 5:35 pm
Hi Neil,
it’s sad the number of people who get ripped off with bogus promises of top rankings, esecially when the “proof” offered is often not really proof.
SEO is not some dark art, it’s actually quite simple..
It all comes down to backlinks and using the right keywords for those backlinks.
my favorite example of this is still Adobe being #1 for “click here” out of ~1.2 billion results..
keep up the good work.
Mattg
November 30th, 2006 at 7:03 pm
Hi Neil
Good tip, but as a newbie I found that if your site is not optimized with the correct meta tags then good phrases are not going to help much.
I think for newbies it is more important that when they build a site either they have the host do the optimization correctly or find someone who will. It is also important that you know what the correct meta tags are first. I got taken by the company that hosted my site. I am paying for it dearly so not much else to do but rebuild elsewhere.
November 30th, 2006 at 7:52 pm
Neil,
Remember when Blogsubmitter PRO came out and you wrote back to me that out of the billions of JV offers you got that was the one most interesting to you. Then we lost touch. Well, our same friendly little programmer is coming out with an SEO suite that I can’t say anything about publicly but I’m letting you know about it here because I’m sure your mailbox is loaded with Spam.
We’re only taking on about 20 JV partners and making sure they’re well rewarded. We already proved that BSP did what it claimed to do at the time. You think we’ll let anyone down this time? Cheers mate… Sam
November 30th, 2006 at 10:11 pm
Good article. It’s always fun to look into those claims of top rankings. Especially if they claim a top ranking “for a highly competitive keyword in its niche.” What if the niche itself has no competition? lol
November 30th, 2006 at 10:38 pm
Great post and I agree 100%.
I think, good SERPS are possible - even for competitive phrases, but it will never be a “sprint”, SEO is a marathon!
I guess one of the most important things to get good ranking is to provide highly valuable content in a narrow niche. Sure, you’ll still have to do a minimum of marketing, otherwise people won’t know that you exist.
If you provide something of great value, others (authorative sites) will link to you, people will stay longer on your site and come back more frequently… and finally you’ll move up in the major SE’s.
But don’t be fooled, all this takes time and work. Something else, I don’t think you need any expensive SEO tools - they can’t help you to get great rankings if you don’t provide the essentials.
If you want to use some good tools, I highly recommend you check out a site called seobook.com - there is section (I think it’s called SEO Tools) where you find tons of fantastic tools - all you need and absolutely free.
Take care.
Robert
December 1st, 2006 at 5:35 pm
i am still wondering if anyone actually tells the truth? I realise if all the secrets are exposed then it will make it a bit difficult to increase profits for the ‘gurus’.
I am wondering what my sites needs to achieve good SER and recognition?.
It will be a pleasure to give an opinion.
I am just an individual trying to better my life, and help will be much respected. I feel im missing out the SEO altogether.
I do get the point in terms of keywords, not worth going after are the single keywords. Even if the big boys are paying high prices for them.
I will not believe the hype!
December 5th, 2006 at 12:42 pm
Hi Neil
I read your article with interest. You are correct that the total number of results appearing when you search without quotes is not a true indicator of the quality of the competition. However it is an important factor for sure, because you [strong]are[/strong] competing with them.
A weak site that heavily focusses on “home business arlington” may easily be beaten by a strong site (strong as in having more links and overall reputation) that casually mentions “home business arlington”.
I run a professional SEO service that offers guaranteed top 10 ranking. We regularly come across people who don’t bother about our suggestion that a particular phrase may not draw much traffic because their ego tells them that they must rank for the term that they think is ‘important’ for them. Others discuss this ‘potential traffic’ thing more openly. So there are all sorts of people.
However it is quite commonplace to see people talk about getting ranked #1 on terms that have either very poor competition or virtually no demand.
My best recommendation for the newbie is to try and get ranked for long tail terms. These are 3-4 word combinations that may draw lower volume of traffic per term but are easier to rank for. The traffic for several such terms can combine to give you pretty large overall traffic.
December 5th, 2006 at 1:07 pm
Hi Arun,
I totally agree with all your comments.
I also agree that the “long tail” is what beginners should focus on. Getting traffic from low competition phrases will be much easier than trying to beat lots of competition. By targetting many “long tail” phrases, a stream of traffic can be built up.
Which brings me back to PLR articles… they’re full of “long tail” phrases that people are searching for. You may get visitors to your sites who typed a phrase into Google that you hadn’t expected… but it’s “hidden” in one of your articles. That’s one of the best features of using PLR content.
See my new post for the PLR sources I recommend.
http://www.neilshearing.com/2006/12/05/another-source-of-quality-plr-articles/
Neil.
December 19th, 2006 at 7:52 pm
I agree with you Neil.
I’ve been sending “video emails”, talking “face to face”, putting video on my websites, and doing “live video broadcasting” for 2-3 years now. However, it’s not that easy to get your video website listed high on the search engines.
Placing your video’s on all the “free video site’s” is new way to get traffic. But, it’s not going to guarantee anyone a top ten listing.
And, the new software that you are talking about (Traffic Geyser) is way over priced. I do believe that the future on the internet is… Video! However, I think I’ll wait until someone else copies that program and sells it at a more reasonable price… without the monthly fee!
As opposed putting video’s on free websites for increased traffic, I’ve had more success by sending “Video Emails” to my current subscriber list, (then boring text emails), so I know “Video” is coming.
“Video Emails” allow my subscribers to really get to know me. I’m suprised more “internet guru’s” aren’t using video emails to their lists.
And, why is everyone still doing “tele-seminar’s” when you can do a “Live Video Broadcast” with up to 500 people at a time watching you? (No long distance fees.)
I guess they just don’t know it’s available.
Dan Black
www.SuperSecretVideo.com
December 29th, 2006 at 11:45 am
Hey Neil
you did a very good job and, as a past post said, it is great how some of these people claiming to get you on page 1 of Google are nowhere to be found when you do a search for their site.
Often their sites will have no page Google rank either, so if they can’t deliver the goods for thir own sites, how do they expect us to believe that they can do it for the rest of us?
With the engines getting smarter all the time (latent semantic indexing etc), then it will be good content that should win out over trickery in the end.
Its a a good work.