SEO Red Flags and Warning Signs

SEO red flags and warning signs are important to know so you can avoid dishonest search engine optimization companies/firms and avoid hurting your website’s ranking and avoid even getting banned by search engines. Shopping for SEO or Search Engine Optimization can be confusing and daunting! In this article, you will learn the red flags and warning signs that you should look for. And when you see them, you’re much better off going the other way!

Here are the top five SEO red flags and warning-signs we have repeatedly seen:

1. “We guarantee you the #1 position on Google.”
Red flag #1/warning sign #1 is the position #1-guarantee. No one can guarantee you the #1 position, period. Your website will likely compete against millions, hundreds of millions or even billions of other listings for that one single spot; there is no way that the SEO or search engine optimizer can offer you that sort of odds. If you look at the odds for certain search terms, it is almost like getting a “guarantee” that you will win the lottery! (Take a look at the screen-shots at the end of this article to see what we mean.)

Also, if you’re “guaranteed” position #1, guess what position they will guarantee the next client just like you? And then the one after that? There is only one #1-position for each search term so how is it possible to guarantee that one single position to so many people?

2. “We have a special relationship with Google.”
They don’t. Google doesn’t maintain any sort of “special relationship” with search engine optimizers. Even having many friends working at Google will do nothing for a search engine optimizer. So when you hear that a search engine optimizer has a “special relationship”, remember that there is no such thing.

3. “We have priority submission with Google.”
Again, it’s another myth. No one gets “special prioritization”. If no one has a “special relationship” with Google, then no one gets “special priority”. It’s logical. As far as we know, all submissions are treated equally and reviewed the same way by their system.

4. “Your website will be submitted to thousands of search engines (or directories)”.
Sounds good, doesn’t it? But how many search engines do you know? When we ask people to name the ones they know, they usually name Google, Bing and Yahoo. That’s three, not “thousands”. Yes there are some smaller, lesser-known search engines out there but think about what you are using. Chances are, other people are using the same thing. So guess what you should be focusing on?

5. “We will get your website thousands of incoming links.”
It is highly unlikely but if it is true, this will probably hurt your website more than it will help it. Search engines like Google will understand that you are buying links and/or dealing with link farms and they will penalize your website accordingly for it. Google may demote your website’s rankings or even ban it completely from search results. This is counter-productive and in the end, it will hurt your website and business more than it will help it.

There are many other SEO red flags or warning signs but these are the top five we have frequently seen. The good thing is, they are easy to spot so that means they are easy to avoid.

In upcoming articles, we’ll discuss:

Here are the screen-shots of different terms we randomly searched to show the number of search-results that are available for each of the search-terms: