Brainstorm Design Blog

One of my clients this morning forwarded me an email that they received from iBusiness Promotions guaranteeing them a #1 placement on Google. Their website states that:

"we guarantee that your website will be found in the regular (unpaid) top 10 results on Google for the keywords of your choice. No catch, no strings attached"

• Rule No.1: No one can guarantee you a #1 position on Google. Google themselves make this clear in their own guidelines.
• Rule No.2: Don’t buy from anyone who promotes their services via an unsolicited email. Spam is unethical as well as illegal. Would you trust a company to promote who uses unethical business practices to promote your website?
• Rule No.3: This is probably the most important rule of all. Getting to the first page of Google doesn’t mean your website will get more visitors of even more business.
  

Companies that guarantee you a first page ranking on Google normally achieve this focusing on a keyword that is uncompetitive or irrelevant to their business. That way, they achieve their objective of getting you to #1 but with zero benefit to your business.

Lets take gardening as an example. If I’m a gardener in Hatfield, and I’m looking for more business, I may get approached by an SEO company guaranteeing me a #1 position on Google. They will achieve their guarantee by promoting me for the keywords: “gardener Hertfordshire” or “landscaping Hertfordshire”. There’s one little problem: Most people don’t search by county, they search by town. So someone in Bushey will search for “gardener Bushey”. Someone in Radlett, will search for “gardener Radlett”, but they are unlikely to search for “gardener Hertfordshire”. As a result, I will get to #1 on Google as few of my competitors will be promoting themselves on a county basis, but at the same time, I won’t get any visitors.

So before choosing an SEO company, keep to the following guidelines:

1. Don’t buy from anyone who has contacted you via an unsolicited email.
2. A reputable company should be chosen on the basis of previous experience, not guarantees. The SEO company you approach should be able to demonstrate a proven track record and give you some case studies as well as references.
3. It’s not enough to get you to #1 on Google. The SEO company also need to get you more visitors, and the right kind of visitors! E.g.If I’m promoting vegetarian food, there’s no point in attracting lots of visitors who are looking for meat products.
4. A reputable SEO company should be doing far more than just getting you more traffic, they should be helping you convert those visitors into customers. There’s no point in having hundreds of visitors to your website if they don’t end up doing business with you.
   

The most important rule of all when choosing an SEO company is to ask around. Speak to other companies you know who have used SEO services and find out how they got on. And before you sign any contract, always make sure you ask for references.

This morning I participated in a forum discussion on a recurring subject: Should you exchange links with other businesses?

It's a well known fact that a large number of inbound links to your site can improve your search engine ranking. Google views a high number of links as a "vote of confidence" in your site. What is less well known is that Google also looks at the relevance of the links to your site. e.g. If you are a construction company, it may be helpful for you to have inbound links from an architect and surveyor. But it won't make much difference if the link is from an online jeweller.

My advice is that ultimately, it is quality rather than quantity that counts. Better to have a few high quality relevant links to your site than a large number of random businesses linking to you. So be wary of those spam emails that offer link exchanges.