

SEO is fraud? Look at the size of these top SEO companies - paraschopra
http://www.topseos.com/rankings

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davelightman
"Tell a Lie That is Big Enough, and Repeat it Often Enough, and the Whole
World Will Believe It"

The term 'genre' seems a more fitting for SEO than the word 'industry'. There
are a number of people who have become very successful with it.

If anything I think these numbers indicate that the model of piggy backing off
an established service can be profitable (rather than just attributing value
to SEO).

I won't outright say the entire thing is a fraud...hell even Isaac Newton was
an alchemist. He was just remembered for things other than trying to turn lead
to gold.

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wehriam
To be featured on TopSEOs.com, you pay between $5000.00-$10,000 to enter a
competition with loosely defined metrics.

<http://www.topseos.com/seo-ppc-competition>

[http://www.topseos.com/seo-and-ppc-
competition/index/evaluat...](http://www.topseos.com/seo-and-ppc-
competition/index/evaluation-criteria)

A high buy-in fee for a competition removes any semblance of impartiality, as
firms that do not want or cannot afford to participate are excluded.

The only conclusion I can draw is that even the SEO ranking sites are
misleading.

~~~
tommysanders
I just browsed their competition, just look a little closer. It's actually
400/month per competition. So significantly cheaper than what you indicate.
Frankly even if it was higher, it would just mean that the small agencies and
one men show just get weeded out - often times they really do not have the
capacity to compete with the big guns anyways.

I can conclude one of three things:

1\. You are not part of it, therefore you are not happy. 2\. You can't afford
it, so why not point a finger at it instead. 3\. Cost of any competition, or
even the free competitions, does not indicate any impartiality. Keep in mind
all entrants pay or don't pay.

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ankeshk
1.

SEO is not fraud. But a lot of people who do search engine optimization sure
don't know what they're doing.

2\. Why isn't SEO fraud?

As a business, you create your promotional message. And then you decide where
to run that promotional message. You determine where your right people hang
out.

Say you determine that newspapers and radio ads are 2 good mediums for your
message. But if you run the same message without any tweaks for the specific
mediums, you won't do very well.

Your message has to be relevant for the medium.

If you determine that your business requires a website (or that your business
is a website) - and that a lot of your right people will be using the search
engines, you need to focus on SEO. You need to learn the tricks of SEO trade.
And make your message fit the medium.

3\. 5 Minute SEO

Two parts of SEO:

i. Onpage SEO: Search engines look at your web page to determine _what_ it
should rank for

\- The URL of the page has to be keyword rich

\- The title of the page has to be keyword rich

\- Use H1 and H2 tags well

\- Make sure the entire website is w3c validated

\- Use meta description for key pages (especially product pages)

\- Create an xml sitemap

ii. Offpage SEO: Search engines look at who is linking to you to determine how
highly it should rank you

\- Get links from authority websites

\- Create good linkworthy content - linkbaiting is actually good

\- Get thousands of links from directories (blog / article / rss directories)

~~~
paraschopra
I understand on-page optimization (for telling search engines what is
important on your pages) and having good, relevant content to link to. But
what is the point of having thousands of links from directories nobody would
ever care to visit? Isn't that spamming the search engines in a way?

~~~
ankeshk
No humans will ever actually come across the directory links. But search
engines still take them into consideration while ranking your websites.

It goes back to playing according to the medium rules.

Note: don't only do directory submissions. If all search engines can see is
you're getting link backs from not so good pages, they won't rank you well.

And don't only rely on getting authority linkbacks. Because if search engines
see that you have very few linkbacks, they won't rank you well.

So use them both: create good content and focus on getting authority
linkbacks. And at the same time, submit your site to various directory
submission services. Quality + quantity linkbacks = search engines ranking you
well.

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paraschopra
I submitted this link because there had been lots of discussion lately that
SEO is fraud and it isn't worth it. I stumbled across this link and the money
that these companies are making really make me doubt that businesses don't
value SEO.

What are your thoughts?

EDITED: corrected a typo

~~~
yuvi
There are really two separate issues with SEO:

1\. The little legitimate stuff they do that would increase pagerank (better
website design, alt text, metadata, etc.) is incredibly overpriced for the
actual value, especially compared against SEO claims. But companies that don't
shell out for a website designer that can do this in the first place deserve
to be ripped off.

2\. The even shadier SEOs will use botnet linkspam and the like. This is
actively destroying the web and companies that do this do not deserve to exist
period.

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wunki
My opinion is that SEO doesn't add that much to the value of a website when
the website is designed with good standards. Ex: robots.txt, sitemap.xml, meta
tags, no frames, etc.

The fact is however, most companies wouldn't know if there website is build
according to these standards. This makes it that SEO people can easily sell
there product because which company wouldn't want to be higher on Google? I
give you money, you make me first on Google, I get more money. That's the
simple and sellable equation SEO companies give.

(It also relates to the common problem in web development. Most of the buyers
don't know what quality they are getting because they will never look at the
source code. They only see a pretty website.)

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kailashbadu
No. it’s not a fraud.

SEO is not a dubious thing in itself. It mostly isn’t a scam the way snake-oil
is. It’s proven and established fact that a website can employ a host of
legitimate techniques to climb their way to the top of a search engine result
page: on-page optimization, terrific and viral content, string of PR
activities, buzz marketing etc, among others.

However, the SEO market has no dearth of companies that promise unrealistic
results and rip fortune off their clients. They aren’t aware of, let alone be
capable of, anything further than submitting a site to a bunch link farms and
filling up a web page with unnatural keywords.

There was a time when the field of medicine was swarming with quacks. But that
doesn’t invalidates the veracity and effectiveness of medical science itself.
A trained physician can do wonders to an ailing body.

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amanes
I created a couple of websites because I don't want others to go through what
I went through....I documented what happened to me on one of my websites, and
the seo company said that if I didn't take down the site, they were going to
sue me. So I took down some information, but I still got comments from
x-employees to the effect that what they did to me is what they do in
general....They either were once a big player in so. cal, or they still
are...i don't know.

The websites are: www.seoincscam.com and www.seoscaminc.com the latter has
consumer protection info in it.

Thanks for posting this...it is helpful

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troyk
I wonder how much of it is from the long tail. I know small non-web savvy
businesses that happily pay $1-2k a month to outsource their SEO, as business
from yellow pages continues to decline.

~~~
mhotchen
I've seen businesses in yellow pages using questionable tactics as well,
especially in the over-saturated areas such as Taxi's and moving businesses. A
lot of the businesses advertised are actually one business, and they often
have business names like "AAAAAAAAAAAAAA Taxis" (this is usually found in
small writing at the bottom of the advert). It's gaming the system but it
obviously works. Same can be said for SEO.

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niyazpk
I am pretty sure that the Nigerian scammers and multilevel marketing
fraudsters made more money.

SEO is not fraud per se, but it smells like one. SEO works for sure and it may
take your website from 100 page to the first page, but it feels like they are
gaming the system, not adding value.

~~~
henrikschroder
The thing that makes it smell like a fraud is that they can only improve a
client's score if few others use SEO as well, and if a client is moved to the
front page for some keyword, someone else has to drop off the front page.

So imagine a world where everyone uses SEO, what then? How could you ever move
to the front page, if everyone else on it is using SEO as well? Cheat? Use
better SEO? Who would win on an SEO arms race? Certainly not users, and I
would imagine the search companies becoming even more annoyed about it.

~~~
davidw
Summary: rankings are zero-sum games.

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imraj
well it is too much to ask for a search engine to be able to actually judge
the qualilty of services provided by the enterprise. The current system has
its merits and demerits and like any other system, it will be exploited by
some

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allenbrunson
this seems a specious argument. bernie madoff made a lot of money, too. does
that mean what he did wasn't illegal?

