Oh C’mon. Is that Really SEO?
I was referred to a website selling “how to do SEO” information. They claim that they get great search engine rankings… OK, fine.
But on their sales letter they show a screen-capture from Google for the search construction auditing firm and say they’re first and second out of 2 million results… and they did it in less that six weeks!
Oh, C’mon.
Surely, by now, everyone knows that those results will include any webpages with the words, “construction”, “auditing” and “firm” on them. If you search for “construction auditing firm” using quotes, to determine who’s actually using or optimising for that phrase, you get EIGHT results… and two are from the seo company… so only six were competitors!
Why do I care? Because it’s fairly misleading… and in any case, I’ve done better myself. Years and years ago, you could search AltaVista for Business Opportunities and the ScamFreeZone homepage was the second organic result and also the third organic result for Home Business… phrases which were slightly more competitive, even back then, than “construction auditing firm” is nowadays.
November 21st, 2007 at 4:56 pm
True it may be somewhat misleading but let’s be honest - who do you know who uses quotation marks when searching? If they do they tend to be in the SEO business anyway.
November 21st, 2007 at 5:20 pm
Hi Adrian,
People don’t search using quotes, you’re right. But that’s the only way to see how competitive a phrase is.
If I optimize for My Fishing Wife, with 2 million results at Google, is that impressive SEO? I really only have 7 people to beat, which is the number of results shown when you search for the phrase in quotes.
The quotes show you the true competition… even though people don’t search using quotes.
This reminds me of the discussion with the SEO expert who said I couldn’t get a top ten ranking on Google with my site…
http://www.neilshearing.com/2007/10/04/top-ten-ranking-at-google-with-plr-articles/
So I showed him a 4th position I got without any SEO and without even trying using un-rewritten PLR content.
November 22nd, 2007 at 1:25 pm
hi Neil,
Just want to ask advice on how to submit my site to search engine properly… I have tried free submission but I still I don’t get even One hit from search engine. Is that possible to get atleast 50 hits per day using free submission to search engine…. If possible… Pls… email me..tnx….
November 22nd, 2007 at 3:58 pm
Submitting your site to search engines gets them to send their spider to crawl your pages and index your site. It doesn’t guarantee you any traffic… for that, you’ll need to get links to your pages so that Google starts to see your pages as “relevant”.
One site I have gets 1,500 to 2,000 visits per day… all for free, using un-rewritten Private Label Articles.
November 23rd, 2007 at 2:56 am
Hi neil,
That’s very excellent 1500 to 2000 visits per day…so interesting…Pls give us an Idea how to do that… hope you can extend to me that Idea… nothing to worry im not your competitor coz beginner is impossible to compete with the expert… Hope u can… I am currently looking for a job and I need income to support my financial needs ….
tnx… n God bless
November 23rd, 2007 at 11:36 am
Hi Judjie,
I used my Auto Smart Site scripts. They are currently only available to customers, but I’ll release them to the public soon.
Neil.
November 24th, 2007 at 5:38 am
Agreed. Even though a link on my site got a client of mine in the Google search engine in less than 12 hours, it did not provide good SEO.
Example: performance auto restorations
Try that in Google with and without quotes. Without, my client is ranked number 1 with what looks likes tons of competition. With quotes, he’s ranked number 1 but with only my site as competition.
That’s not good SEO, that’s just quick Google insertion.
November 24th, 2007 at 10:37 am
exactly.
November 26th, 2007 at 3:38 pm
Thanks Neil. Yes, I’d really learnt few solid ideas about SEO from your posts here. Now I look at myself and I realized that at my level and knowledge I will easily fall for that kind LIE.
Thanks for someone like you that love the truth. This shows one should always go the whole hog - do research and ask questions before spending money on anything online.
:)
September 2nd, 2008 at 6:07 pm
There are lots of so called “SEO experts” out there that uses PPC to advertise their services because they know for a fact that they ranked well for highly frequented SEO related keywords. This is also why so many business owners are complaining of being scammed. - Rif Chia