InformationWeek SMB: Search Engine Optimization – Steering Clear of SEO Scam Artists
“The SEO business is 80 percent scam,” according to one commentator. This article tells you how to navigate the shoals of engaging a search engine optimization consultant.
“Search engine optimization–the canny use of keywords and other techniques designed to shoot a website to the top of a search–is the make-or-break factor for many new businesses.
It is also the web’s unfolding, and unregulated, frontier. There are countless SEO strategists, consultants and self-professed experts who will claim they can beam your site up into Google’s top 10 search results–for a price, of course. Consultants commonly charge upward of $200 an hour, and most will pressure you to sign a contract that keeps them on retainer for months–at prices as steep as $12,000 a month. Unscrupulous SEO firms not only make promises they can’t keep, the worst of them also use shady practices that might produce no traffic, deliver the wrong traffic or even get you banned from planet Google.”