THE NO PERFORM NO PAY TRICK.
This is a favourite of many SEO companies and is designed to lull you into an extreme sense of false security. You think its a great deal. It sounds like the perfect offer. I mean you have nothing to loose but all to gain. But, like with all these types of offers there is a huge downside. That is, in order to rank some of your keywords these companies will use extremely spammy and totally non compliant methods to rank easy non competitive keywords.
Sure they may be able to rank these very temporarily, you will see the results, and then after they lock you into a contract, your rankings are going to SLUMP. Why you ask? Because the links they used to get you a prominent position on Google are unsustainable. They have spammed you to page 1 and this WILL NOT LAST. Once ranked ( even for a day) you will have to pay them.
So, you will have to pay them, because they did rank you but they will come up with some fanciful and colourful excuse as to why the rankings are falling. In the meantime, you are handing over cash to these guys every month – BE WARNED – no rank no pay deals are a SHAM!
THE QUOTE LOW TRICK
Again a great way to secure your business without actually doing anything. Many SEO companies in Sydney and throughout Australia are so desperate to get your business that they will undercut any quote and will then, once they have you signed up, do absolutely nothing. That is, they work on the theory that you wont be looking at your rankings until the 3 to 4 month mark at which point they will say its Google’s fault you are not ranking.
Meanwhile they have your money and have been taking it gladly since they signed you up. Yes, they may have done a few back links on really dodgy websites, but they won’t have looked at your actual website to see if there are any errors, or why it’s not Google compliant.
Quoting very low prices and getting you in with them is a really nasty trick and WILL result in your website getting penalised due to the poor work being carried out.
SEO and websites need time, effort and lots of hard work and communication to make it successfully rank – there are ABSOLUTELY no short cuts when it comes to SEO and this is why you must pay a proper price that reflects the man hours invested. Paying relatively nothing means you are going to get exactly that in return. In the meantime your competitors are doing the right thing by using a proper SEO company and winning all the new business. Gambling with your SEO and leaving it to a bunch of overseas ( and in some cases local) strangers is a huge risk. Be very careful at this stage of your business marketing.
THE WE PROVIDE EXTENSIVE REPORTS TRICK
So many companies will show you their reporting system. These ranking reports generally come at the end of every month and will show you how well your website has been performing. I have seen reports up to 30 pages; with graphs, statistics, trends, analytics, basically information overload.
Don’t be dazzled and overly impressed by these reports. They are there as a disguise to fool you into believing that work is being done. They are ALL SMOKE AND MIRRORS – TOTALLY USELESS and extremely hard to understand. Their philosophy behind this is, that if it looks impressive and complicated, then they MUST BE doing some great work. It's a bluff and a trick to get you to commit to another months SEO work.
Nice charts, pretty graphs and lots of comparison tables are absolute crap and don’t mean a thing. Be careful about this as it’s a way in which these SEO companies trick you into thinking that actual proper work is being done. Remember your concern is about rankings and if this is not happening then all the great looking reports mean nothing. A waste of paper and an waste of time and a waste of your money!
You will see this in their quotes as well – often they are 20 -30 page quotes full of absolute BS. Avoid these guys at all costs – their intention is to take your money – thats all they care about!
THE CHECK OUR WEBSITE RANKINGS – LOOK HOW GOOD THEY ARE TRICK.
Make sure these guys are ranking organically and that you haven’t found them through adwords. A common mistake but happens all the time. SEO companies will tell you they are in the top 3 positions, when in fact they are the ads at the top.
You think, WOW, how good are these guys, but the reality is, they are paying to be there, which is NOT what SEO is about. Be careful with this one – its easy to get misled and make the wrong choice based on this illusion. SEO companies spend thousands of dollars weekly to appear in the top 3 positions. Why? Cause it's a lucrative business to sacm you out of your money. Be careful here – know the difference between organic, natural rankings and pay per click advertising. This small difference could save your business.