How much is this Search Engine Optimization service worth?
I see several classified ads purporting to get a listing to appear on Google’s first hit pages. Here is one, text below, that purports to get a company listed MORE THAN ONCE on the top search-engine hits page.
MY QUESTION: What kind of money should a small home-based business person offer for this listing? Or, these kinds of services, in general.
<snipped text follows>
If you want your small business to show up on Google’s first hit page more than once, you need to crowd out the rest of your competitors. Sort of like having multiple listings on the Yellow Pages, right?
Can that be done?
Yes. In one case, one outfit has seven out of ten of the first ten Google hits.
In another search, four out of ten hits belong to just one outfit.
How was that done? By using out-of-the-box thinking.
I can do the same for you. How much is this worth to you?
(end of snipped tex)
3 Responses
vicseo
07 Feb 2010
Jonny B
07 Feb 2010
I wouldn’t pay anything to a site that refers to visitors as hits. Hits are terms used either by someone that knows nothing about search engines and tries to make it sound like they do. He’s talking about traffic, visitors, ad placement and ranking on search engines.. There terminology is completely off.
Mary D
07 Feb 2010
In the world of getting rankings on the search engines there are three types of companies: White hat, gray hat, and black hat. White hats are those companies that follow all of Googles rules when trying to obtain quality, high rankings. These companies work best with big name websites that don’t want to break the rules. Gray hat companies tend to work with smaller organizations or those websites that are a little more willing to bend the rules a little for good placement. Finally, black hats will break any rule possible so long as they get first page placement.
The bottom line is that NO company can EVER gaurantee you first page placement on any search engine. Google for instance works with around 100 different algorithms to determine where a website will rank. As an optimization company, all you can do is help your clients fulfull as many of those 100 algorithms as possible but in the end you can only influence rankings, not control.
So, if this company is assuring first page placement they are probably going with a lot of black hat procedures. Will it work? Yes, it will work quickly in fact. Unfortunately, Google is VERY VERY smart and they will figure out over not a very long period of time what you are doing. Once they figure it out they will bounce your site to the back of the bus never to be seen on the search engines again. Of course by then, this company will already havee all of the money that it was worth to you.
Mary D’s response is most appropriate. And any illegal spamdexed website can simply be reported at spamreport@google or yahoo and the website will be removed accordingly.
Good luck!