5 Warning Signs of a Bad SEO Company
Over Promising or Giving a Specific Time Frame for Increased Ranking
An experienced and legitimate SEO company knows that there are never any guarantees when it comes to organic search. There are too many variables. Increasing your site’s ranking may take months depending on your competition and what phrases you are targeting. For some very competitive phrases, it may take years to get to the first page of the organic search results.
Any SEO company that guarantees your site will be up in a short amount of time is either being dishonest with you or they are using black hat techniques to fulfill their promises. What are black hat techniques? SEO techniques that Google frowns upon and may even penalize you for. So although black hat approaches may bring quicker results, it is only a matter of time until Google catches on and your site falls from the ranking.
We will submit your site to thousands of search engines!
So what? This sounds pretty impressive but that’s about it.
First of all, your site cannot possibly be relevant to thousands of micro-market search engines that hardly anyone uses.
Furthermore, a site that is optimized well does not really need to be “submitted” .
Vague Details about their SEO Techniques
So it makes sense that a professional is not going to completely educate you on their trade, something that they spent years learning. However, you should still be well informed of the techniques a SEO company is using.
If responses to your questions consist of “Our SEO expert handles that” or other vague explanations, it’s time to hire a new SEO company.
Focuses on Meta Data Instead of On-Page Optimization
Meta Data sounds like pretty fancy jargon and something you should hire an expert for. However this is just one piece of the SEO puzzle.
What is meta data you ask? Meta data is information in the code of the website that tells the search engines what your site is about. There are different types of meta data but specifically meta keywords are no longer considered by Google and haven’t been for a while now. So beware of any SEO company that places a lot of emphasis on meta keywords.
Their Website Does not Rank Well or uses Black Hat Techniques
This should be pretty obvious but if the SEO company you’re considering to hire, cannot optimize their own site, or if they have optimized their site in a spammy, black hat kind of way, stay away. You can pretty much guarantee your site will be optimized the same way!
In the video below, Matt Cutts from Google explains what can happen if you employ the wrong SEO techniques and the importance of hiring an SEO company that uses white-hat techniques.
Looking for an Experienced SEO Company in Michigan?
If you are a Michigan business owner looking for an experienced SEO company that uses white-hat techniques, call Spyder Byte Media today to set up your free consultation. Spyder Byte Media is a SEO and web design company located in Shelby Township, Michigan, that has helped hundreds of business owners in Michigan make it to the top of the search engines and stay there.
