The SEO crooks of Harrogate
I recently met with the ex business editor of a large Yorkshire Newspaper.
After much discussion about the future of print and the future of online news, we came to the subject of SEO and how it all works…or doesn’t in most cases. I was not surprised when my colleague revealed names and web addresses of many companies that have paid large amounts of money for no financial improvement in their website’s performance.
I have since looked at these websites and inspected their construction and underlying HTML code. Most of them show no sign of SEO work or even the ability to be SEO’d yet companies keep paying and hoping for a result. They are dreaming.
It seems like the folklore surrounding SEO goes something like this: Plenty of keywords in the keyword and description metatag section, submitting your site to 100s of directories for free, do something special with social media, buy back links, there is a magic code trick, someone has a special contact at Google, using adverts on the RH side of Google helps, and of course….SEO takes 6 months or more to take effect! Now they would tell you that, wouldn’t they?
Well, sorry, none of the above have any effect at all (that’s zero) unless you know how to combine Links and Social Media correctly where you might get a temporary boost in the SERPS…that’s the results page on Google where everyone wants to see their name. But keywords and the rest of the above…forget it.
You may need me on your side of the table unless you have money to waste! The SEO crooks of Harrogate and District have much to answer for…it gives the SEO community a bad name and good SEO companies do exist…even in Harrogate.
Oh, I also take large bets that I am right about the keywords in metatags part and the other fables. Or you could make a similar monthly payment to your SEO company to achieve nothing and lose it that way!
