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Imagine you’re sitting at home and an unannounced visitor rings your bell. “I’ve been looking at your neighborhood and noticed that your house isn’t as attractive as it could be,” the visitor says. “If you’ll simply give me the keys to your house and $200/month, I’ll see to it that your house becomes the most noticed house on the block.” So…. in this scenario, how many of you are looking for the spare key and the checkbook? Not many, I’m sure.
Recently several of Imp Designs’ clients have reported being contacted by an out of state search engine company. They state that they’ve been researching the market and discovered deficiencies in the keywords or coding of a site and that if you’ll simply sign up for a package and hand over all access to your website, they’ll make sure your site ranks on the first page of Google. Perfectly rational people who would never consider giving their house key to the visitor in the home scenario have called us asking if this is a good idea.
First of all, when’s the last time you even considered doing business with a telemarketer? No legitimate, ethical search engine company is going to cold call you. They don’t have to. Second, giving a third party total access to your website is a very bad idea. In the case of the company referred to above, I’ve discovered that they typically install hidden link farm pages on their client’s sites. Lastly, this company requests your credit card information over the phone for payment. A quick Google search of this company has revealed an enormous number of complaints concerning unauthorized charges.
There are plenty of legitimate search engine companies in the area. When choosing a firm, exercise the same discipline you would to hire any other vendor. Ask for references, follow up with calls to those references, and get everything in writing. Be aware that search engine optimization is an on-going process that takes time to see results. Stay away from firms that guarantee results or promise quick fixes; Google’s Webmasters pages state that you should be wary of such firms.
In other words, just think before acting!
Chris Basnight is the owner of Imp Designs, LLC a small but mighty graphic design and web development company located in Raleigh, North Carolina.
©2009 Imp Designs, LLC
