You’ve taken the leap to start your own business, or you’ve been in business for a while and want to optimize your website for organic search on Google. Here’s some advice. Beware of SEO consultants who boast amazing, quick results. Chances are they are link buyers. And it could cost you dearly. Don’t believe me? Read my earlier post, “How to rank higher in Google search for free.” Still not convinced? Here’s the story of Ryan Abood from GourmetGiftBaskets.com.
In the past, I’d done all our search-engine optimization myself. But as we grew, we started paying companies to reach out to relevant sites and ask them for links. Instead, one of the companies admitted it was paying for links. Google looks at that like buying an election.
Google blocked organic search results at a terrible time, the holiday season which accounted for 40-60% of the company’s yearly revenue. The company lost $2 million during the 2008 holiday season and another couple million in post holiday sales in 2009. With no social media presence to fill the void, Abood purchased as much pay-per-click advertising as he could.
After rectifying things with Google, the company is reappearing in organic search results. Sales have rebounded, and now he employs a social media manager, affiliate marketing manager and a link monitor.
The moral of this story is there’s no quick and easy way to game the Google page rank system. Don’t lose valuable business by taking a shortcut.
For more information on search engine optimization, download this helpful SEO kit from Hubspot.
