SEO ‘Specialists’ Causing Panic

SEO specialists causing panic

SEO ‘Specialists’ Causing Panic

Lately a lot of businesses with websites are being targeted by so called Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) specialists (who are commonly based in overseas countries) who are putting the hard sell on small businesses about gaining access to their websites to ‘fix’ some things. These phone calls or emails can sound quite serious and make you want to drop everything. However, that’s the way sales people are trained to make you feel.

Please note, it’s never a good idea to give someone your website login details just because they claim to be an expert. Even though they might be able to talk the talk, if you’ve never heard of their company or can’t find mention of it on the internet, then they’re obviously just out to make a quick buck and in the process leave your website open to cyber attacks.

These people will often claim that the following points need addressing immediately otherwise your website search engine ranking is going to be detrimentally affected:

  • Bad links pointing to your website
  • Technical errors such as HTML coding errors, broken links and missing image alt tags
  • Duplicate content
  • The amount of high quality/authoritative links pointing to your website

Having researched some of these points for clients who have received emails making these claims, I have found that sometimes there is truth behind the claims but the severity of the problems is very minor.
I.e. Duplicate content does appear on the internet, but it will be one sentence that usually appears on a ‘directory’ type website such as truelocal.com.au or another website that is helping advertise the business in question.

Google aren’t going to condemn you for one sentence appearing on another website. However, when whole pages or paragraph after paragraph are being seen as duplicates, Google can become suspicious and degrade your search engine rankings.

You can check if there is any duplicate content on your website yourself by going to CopyScape, inputting your website URL and clicking the Go button.

The other issues such as bad links, technical errors and authoritative inbound links do actually go towards your search engine rankings. Some of these points are easily fixed whereas others can take quite a lot of time and effort. In the end, taking action to improve these issues will benefit your website, but taking no action won’t immediately doom your website.

If you receive a phone call or email similar to what I have explained above, don’t panic. Get in touch with your web developer and ask their opinion on the matter.

If you have any concerns about these kinds of issues affecting your website’s search engine rankings, please do not hesitate to contact Live Link Websites.