founder M16 Marketing Member of the Forbes Agency Council. He is a leading marketing his technologist on a mission to create success stories.
Getty
You don’t have to plan and execute your own search engine optimization (SEO) strategy. Alternatively, you can partner with a digital marketing agency that specializes in SEO.
These types of agencies perform in-page and off-page SEO to help your website rank higher on the organic search engine result pages (SERPs). However, no matter which partner you choose, there are certain her SEO services to avoid.
1. Link Exchange
Some agencies offer link exchange as an SEO service. For a fee, you can connect your website to other sites in the same niche. Your website links to those sites and they give back by linking to yours.This is known as link exchange and was once an effective form of SEO. Unfortunately, link exchange is now useless at best and harmful at worst.
Link exchanges do not improve a website’s ranking in the SERPs as the links cancel each other out. When your website exchanges links with another site, search engines devalue them. Neither your website nor the linked site can make a profit. Google has also been known to penalize websites that participate in link exchanges. His advanced SEO section in Google Search Central lists large link exchanges as a violation, thus causing search penalties.
2. Directory Submission
Avoid purchasing directory submissions. This decades-old SEO service of his involves third parties such as digital marketing agencies to submit websites to online directories. There are thousands of online directories. Some have different requirements, but they all show structured data about submitted websites. The online directory may display a custom title and description of the website and a link to it to his website.
Your website may get links from directory submissions, but it won’t help you rank. Online directories are not authoritative. Most of them are low quality properties with a significant number of outbound links and little or no inbound links.
3. Content automation
Because of the role content plays in SEO, some digital marketing agencies offer content automation as an SEO service. Use our software to automatically create unique content and publish it to your website.
Content automation may sound like a smart investment that saves you time and money, but it can hinder your SEO efforts. This service typically involves the use of text spinning software that scrambles existing text content to make it unique.with newly created content teeth It is often poorly structured and hard to read. A website needs unique content to rank well in his SERPs, but content automation is no substitute for handcrafted content.
4. Private blog network
Another SEO service to avoid is a private blog network (PBN). A PBN is a group of low-quality websites used to boost the ranking of one or more external sites.
The problem with PBNs is that they don’t provide truly organic links. They provide artificial links as they are used to manipulate search rankings. Websites can even be penalized for using PBN services. Google started cracking down on websites involved in his PBN in 2014. Now Google continues to penalize websites that use his PBN. After purchasing a PBN service, you may see a message in your Search Console account indicating that your website has received a manual penalty.
5. Social media followers
Avoid the temptation to buy social media followers. The amount of engagement your website generates on social media can impact your SERP rankings, but buying followers is not the answer.
Whether you buy 100 followers or 10,000 followers, they may not be made up of real people. Digital marketing agencies sell social media followers by creating tons of fake accounts that are used to follow customer accounts. These fake accounts may be following your website on social media, but they will not engage with your site by liking or sharing your posts. .
Not only is it ineffective, but buying social media followers can shut down your company’s social media properties. Some social media networks prohibit companies from buying followers. If they discover that your website suddenly has thousands of new followers, they may terminate your site profile or property.
6. Customer Reviews
As with social media followers, avoid buying customer reviews. For local SEO, customer reviews are closely related to search rankings. The more reviews a business has, the higher the business’s website ranks in his SERPs in local searches.
You should grow naturally instead of buying customer reviews. There are some issues with buying customer reviews. First, the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) requires disclosure of all paid guarantees. If you pay for a positive review, it is considered a paid endorsement and the person who wrote the review is legally required to disclose their paid affiliation with your business.
Second, paying for reviews is against the terms of service of most review platforms. For example, if you pay for Google reviews, Google will find them for you. Google may then remove the review or remove your business from the Google My Business platform.
7. Top Ranking Guarantee
Avoid purchasing SEO services or packages that guarantee top rankings. Digital marketing agencies have absolutely no control over the ranking algorithms that search engines use, and they don’t know exactly how those algorithms work.
Legitimate agencies don’t try to win new customers by guaranteeing top rankings. They recognize that SEO is dynamic and encompasses factors beyond their control. As a result, these legitimate service providers make no unsubstantiated warranties.
Not all SEO services are worth buying. Some have a positive impact on website rankings, while others have a negative impact. You can partner with a digital marketing agency, but stay away from these 7 “SEO” services.
The Forbes Agency Council is an invitation-only community for executives at successful public relations, media strategy, creative and advertising agencies. am i eligible?
