Do you pay a monthly SEO fee?
Chances are you’re being scammed!

Yesterday I talked with an attorney about his search engine listings. He was proud of his efforts to come to Google’s first page for certain terms and mentioned that he had hired an SEO company to control his listings and keep his site listed high. I was amazed to hear that he paid a monthly SEO fee for it, mounting up to annual charges of $XXXX.

He saw me frowning, because I had monitored his site over the last year, and had not seen anything spectacular.

“We bring you to the top of Google (and keep you there)”

Almost daily, many of our clients receive emails that claim to “bring them to the top of Google”, even if they are already there. So I get a lot of emails asking “Matt, what do you think, is that worth it?” and up to now, I always have to tell them “You are already there”!

“Imagine someone points at your car and tells you that you can purchase it from him for an incredible price. Would you trust that person?
This exactly is happening today in the SEO market.  Beware! You are being offered what many of you already have.

Make sure you know the ranking of your site, and inquire about competitors.”

Matt Schaefer, President awebsiteforlawyers.com

Here is what you need to know about Search Engine Optimization (SEO):

Monitoring many website search engine rankings over the past years, we have seen ups and downs of many sites for many terms. We learned:

• Once optimized, sites usually either keep their ranking; or they keep on climbing.
• It is very rare to see a site drop (or rise!) dramatically.
  If a site drops radically on Google, this either happens because questionable practices were used (… and Google noticed), or Google changed its algorithm to ensure quality.
• While listings on Google and Yahoo show very steady, Bing! and Ask show more volatility:
  

  Yahoo – violet, Google – green, Bing – yellow, Ask -red

• Well-optimized pages usually keep on climbing. They can be improved by linking to them from well-recognized sites (unless there are certain errors on your site).
• In most cases, the re-optimizing needs to happen when Google changes its algorithm drastically. The last time that happened, the changes were mainly about false in-links from link farms and mobile friendliness.

What will happen when you do not do anything?

• Try it out. Usually, traffic will remain constant. Visitors won’t disappear because a well-optimized page will not lose its authority.

What can be done regularly?

• Building links to your site from credible sources is a slow and work intensive process and should be done with care.
• Blog. Add a new post every other week. This is a reliable way to keep growing.

What should not be done?

• Avoid buying links (there are plenty of companies around that offer it). Google has become unbeatable in finding out link farms and websites that are built to create links.