Minnesota SEO Experts for Top Performance – Minneapolis St. Paul

Is there such a thing as bad SEO?
How can you spot a bogus company?
Can some bad practices hurt your business?

Professional, Researched-Based SEO Is Worth the Cost

Everyone in business today recognizes the importance of search engine optimization in attracting new customers. That fact, though, has led to unscrupulous vendors selling unethical services to unsuspecting business owners and marketing directors. Here is the truth: If you are taken in by cheap SEO and hard-sell unethical practices, you risk irreparable damage to your website. And this doesn’t just affect small companies. Major corporations also fall prey to these scams.

A number of years ago, Google de-listed BMW, a major auto manufacturer, from its database. The company had utilized a number of tricks in an attempt to manipulate search results. They created what are called doorway pages, full of keywords related to auto sales, trying to dominate search listings for a wide range of automobile-related searches. While the technique had some success for a brief period, Google recognized the spam and stopped showing its website. After the problem was corrected, the company slowly regained its search positions, but it’s a lesson that needs to be recognized by all businesses.

Deceptive, Black-Hat Techniques Do More Harm Than Good

When search engines first appeared, their ranking algorithms were rather primitive, and some web designers and self-proclaimed SEO experts quickly adopted deceptive tactics to gain a quick ranking boost. They were successful in getting excellent rankings, but only for a short period. Those techniques were soon recognized as spam and search engines, led by Google, improved their ranking algorithms to counteract them. Search engine optimization implemented by real experts never employs black-hat tactics. The unethical techniques listed below no longer work, and can lead a site that uses them to be penalized by Google, Bing and Yahoo:

Keyword Stuffing Destroys Rankings

One common spam is loading web pages with keywords and search phases, repeated frequently, but without real relevance to the content. Visitors are annoyed by this kind of junk content. They react by leaving the site instantly. This spam is still widely used by unethical SEO and web design companies, because it can sometimes lead to fast ranking boosts. What happens next, though, is not pretty. Google, Bing and Yahoo detect keyword stuffing right away and the high rankings disappear. In the worst cases, Google will simply ban such sites altogether. Some SEO companies use this technique to meet their “Guaranteed Rankings” promises, but such rankings are gone almost immediately.
Doorway Pages Lead to Big Troubles

Many web design and bogus SEO companies use this technique to create multiple pages that use massive keyword stuffing in content, metatags, and URLs on the page. Visitors never see these useless pages, since they are redirected to other pages automatically. Again, this tactic sometimes works for a very short time. It’s useless, though, because search engines detect doorway pages very quickly and recognize them as unethical attempts to fool ranking algorithms. As with BMW, Google penalizes such black-hat tactics and often simply bans those companies’ websites from its listings. Offers with prices too low to be believed often use this technique to increase traffic with no real work done. Any results, however, are brief and can destroy the company’s rankings and reputation permanently.
Link Spamming Is Widely Used

One of the factors Google uses to determine the ranking of a website is the number of links to that site from other trustworthy websites. If your website is linked to by many other sites, that can mean that it has been recognized as valuable by others. Link spammers try to game Google by creating what are called Link Farms. These add links to your site on multiple irrelevant and spam websites. This simply doesn’t work, since Google, Bing and Yahoo immediately recognize the practice and disregard those links. Ethical link building by SEO experts, however, takes time and remains a useful strategy. Link spammers don’t build relevant links, so any money spent on their services is completely wasted.

Choosing Twin Cities Top Search Engine Optimization Experts

Businesses are constantly bombarded with offers that promise high Google rankings. All those offers promise more web traffic at cheap prices and can be very tempting to business owners and marketing directors. All of these use short-term tricks like those described above. Any short-term ranking boosts, though, will lead quickly to long-lasting penalties. Bargain-priced scams can be the worst investment you’ll ever make. Here are some ways to find genuine SEO experts who will get you the high rankings you need over the long term:

Search for SEO Services on Google – Find search engine optimization services in your area by searching for them on Google, using relevant search keywords, along with your location. Any web optimization experts worth their salt should have high ranking sites themselves. Unethical firms have to use other ways to sell services.
Explore the Websites You Find – A professional, ethical SEO company will take the time to help you understand how they get results for their clients. You should find plenty of information on search engine optimization and how it works. Take the time to learn more about it.
Ask to See Actual Rankings – Before you hire any SEO expert, you should expect to see high rankings they have achieved for their clients for a wide range of keywords. Real rankings speak louder than empty promises.
Get References from Current Clients – An SEO company that is successful will have helped its clients build their businesses and increase their leads and sales. Those satisfied clients will be happy to tell you about their success. Ask for these references. If they’re not available, think twice.

High-Performance Search Engine Optimization Experts – Minneapolis St. Paul, MN

Since 2003, the experienced team at Site Revamp has achieved outstanding search engine rankings and revenue-boosting performance for its many clients. We have some of the best SEO experts, talented web designers and marketing copywriters in the Twin Cities metro area on our team. We’ve helped businesses in Minnesota and across the nation achieve their goals. We do that through hard work and an insistence on using only ethical techniques based on a thorough understanding of search engines. We will gladly show you the results we have delivered. We don’t promise performance we can’t deliver. Contact us today. We’ll evaluate your website and give you an objective analysis. We’ll propose a cost-effective plan for services that will give you fast, long-lasting impact. The sooner you start, the sooner you’ll see those results.