As a small or medium business owner, you may want to advertise and promote your website as economically as possible. In recent years, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) has emerged as one of the surest and cheapest way for long-term business promotion.

A typical business owner is not expected to be knowledgeable about SEO and its benefits. Even if the owner knows SEO, he/she may not be sure how to choose an ethical SEO who can get the job done at the best rates and within timeline. Choosing a SEO consultant or company for your website can be a tiring and overwhelming experience. Many SEO specialists will boast about adopting the latest path-breaking SEO techniques, use testimonials from clients and guarantees of #1 placements on Google. But how can you, as a non expert, select a genuine SEO consultant? Listed below, are a few of the main pointers used to detect 'fake' SEO consultants.

#1 Google ranking for Website:

If any company guarantees you that they can place your website in the number one position on Google, then take my advice - RUN in the opposite direction. It's obvious this company is desperate to get business and is willing misleading you to get your hard earned cash. No company can make such claims. Google's algorithms are one of the best kept secrets. What SEO companies can do is optimize and promote the website according to widely known principles, intelligent guess work, best practices and lots of hard work. At most a company can claim that they can acquire good rankings such as top 10 results. But even then, verify their past track record to measure how they fared with other clients.

Very Low Prices:

Many companies charge ridiculously low amount of money for a lot of services. As an astute business person, you can intelligently deduce that any work that requires hours and hours of hard work, research and analysis by a team of experts cannot come cheap. Most of the times, specialists from various fields such as programmers, content writers, SEO analyst, link builders etc. pool their resources to make a site successful on Google. Therefore quality services cannot come as cheap as many companies charge.

Secret and Proprietary Technique That Cannot be Revealed:

I don't think we even need to elaborate on this. As the owner of the website, you should be aware of what's happening to your site and what steps are been taken to optimize and promote it.

Recommending Black Hat Techniques:

Lot of companies recommends shady tactics known as black hat practices to get your site up in search engines. Not only do these practices have very short term benefits, but they can also be very counter productive since the search engines can eventually catch website following these practices. Many websites big and small have been heavily penalized for using such techniques. So play safe and avoid these SEO companies like the plague.

Using Outdated Techniques:


Once upon a time, techniques like reciprocal link exchange, keyword stuffing etc. were used to get good rankings. Google and other search engines have wisened up and rank a site for its worthiness and not just back links and keyword stuffing. Choose a company that will recommends steps to make your site useful & relevant and not take short cuts.

Keep these tips in mind while choosing an SEO company for your website and hopefully they will help you select an SEO company that knows their job and can handle your website promotion very well. Good luck!

Written by Aniruddha Badola. Enovabiz Solutions is a professional [http://www.enovabiz.in]Search Engine Optimization Company Offering [http://www.enovabiz.in]SEO Consultancy and Online Marketing Services to realtor and real estate agents all over the world.

web design writes: yes there are lots of seo companies around the net.. As a business man i have been scam in many times by seo scammers.

10:22:02 Tue Dec 22 2009 CST


Buy Backlink writes: thanks!You made some good points there. Thanks though, i’m glad some people share good stuff like this! It will greatly help me in my SEO activities.

9:59:19 Sat Jun 20 2009 CDT


SEO Consultant writes:
thanks!You made some good points there. I did a search on the topic and found most people will agree with your blog.
Thanks though, i’m glad some people share good stuff like this! It will greatly help me in my SEO activities.


6:31:47 Thu Jun 18 2009 CDT


Quick SEO Help writes: Didn't know people advertised 'Secret and Proprietary Technique That Cannot be Revealed'! That's quite funny.

I think the litmus test for fake SEO is an unwillingness to know about your company. Good SEO is possible only after gaining a thorough understanding of your company, which is followed by a thorough research of what users type into google in the relevant industry. Combining these two, SEO is guaranteed to succeed. It's about a compromise between what your company is and what the searcher wants.

14:51:12 Fri May 8 2009 CDT


Brenda Meltz writes: Bad SEO consultants also promise thousands or millions of hits to a Website. What they neglect to mention is that it is rarely qualified traffic. The Site gets visits, but that traffic rarely converts, resulting in a sale.

Of course, any company can promise a top Google ranking. It won't be for a search term that's of any value, but anyone can get a #1 position for a useless term. Such as: Your company sells socks so you want to come up for the search term "buy wool socks". A bad SEO company will get a top rating for the search term "wooly bully buffanilly sockies". No real visitor looking to convert to a customer would ever use a term remotely similar to that one, and yet it can be #1. Useless, but indeed #1.

12:22:30 Mon Apr 27 2009 CDT


Current Finance writes: Unfortunately the web is full of scums. Your article will definitely help many of us to stay clean! Thank you

4:34:52 Sun Apr 26 2009 CDT


The Dream Manager writes: Thanks. A good warning that small business people need to heed! There's way too many amateurs trying to take people's money without returning real SEO.

8:09:17 Fri Apr 24 2009 CDT


Bill writes: Great article, with good advice.

16:07:20 Thu Apr 23 2009 CDT


kent Web Designer writes: First things first, there are no cheap, quick-fix or easy solutions to gaining high Search Engines Result Pages (SERP's) in search engines for highly sought, competitive search terms.

"The common law of business balance prohibits paying a little and getting a lot. It can't be done. If you deal with the lowest bidder, it's as well to add something for the risk you run" - John Ruskin



7:06:58 Thu Apr 23 2009 CDT


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