Friday, 07 October 2016 / Published in Digital Marketing, Seo, Website Design
Getting to No. 1 on Google
So if I’m honest this article is only half tongue in cheek, there are a lot of good companies out there doing a lot of very useful and productive work in the field of website marketing and search engine optimisation, including ourselves. It can make a huge difference to your organic traffic on Google and Bing. What’s more offering interesting content, providing reviews and having a strong social media presence will benefit your company in more ways than you can imagine.
But… It absolutely amazes me sometimes the amount of spam emails I receive offering Wiser Websites ‘top spot on Google’, some even guarantee it!!
Surely people must realise this is a scam by now. If it was really that easy why would companies be spending thousands of pounds on pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, affiliate partnerships and You Tube ads?
Come to think about it why would someone need to send thousands of spam emails touting for business? If their approach is so successful why don’t they just get top spot for SEO, Search Engine Optimisation. Website marketing and a few other key words and industry catch phrases?
The truth is they can’t, like with so many things in life, if it sounds too good to be true it probably is. Will you see a huge uplift in your traffic if you take up their offer? I very much doubt it.
On one occasion, I replied to a gentleman who had sent me a long and colourful email explaining just how he could get my website to number one on Google for any term I liked, for a fixed cost.
He gave two or three examples of terms where he was ‘in 1st place on Google‘ in the email, by way of example, even showing screenshots from Google searches as evidence. I tried out his terms, and yes they did work but only with the exact spacing and phrase he had laid out.
This is not SEO this is tricking a company to invest in gimmicky techniques with short lived results that can be easily mimicked by your competitors. Real SEO should be timeless, not designed for the latest penguin or panda update but rather part of a strategy which offers internet users what they want and the search engines prefer; a well designed, well indexed, informative website that is engaged with it’s online community .
If it was easy, everyone would be doing it. The truth is always unfortunately a little more complicated, no one (apart from Google) can guarantee you the top spot.
These kind of emails remind me of the old phrase, if you think its expensive to have a professional work on your marketing, wait till you see how expensive it is to let an amateur do it.