And Waste Lots of Time and Money
This company, we will call “some-company.com”, sells repair services in Timbuktu for burritos, chimichangas, tortillas, etc. (I’ve changed their real target keywords and phrases to protect them from embarrassment. )
In late 2009 “some-company.com” hired Webtivity to develop and execute a Search Engine Optimization Campaign for their website. One of the primary strategies we focused on for their campaign was quality link building. This means we obtained powerful links from relevant websites within their industry. Absolutely no Blog Spam or poor directories were used to build links.
By the 1st quarter of 2010 the website for “some-company.com” was ranking in the top 5 positions on Google for 10 of their target keywords, and in the top 10 for all 15.
When they reached these rankings they decided they were very happy with the results, but respectfully declined to renew their contract with Webtivity. What we didn’t know was the company had been lured by a scam company who promised to do the “same” work we were performing, but at a much reduced rate. This scam company proceeded to build automated and spammy links for our previous client, and of course sent glowing reports about the number of links they were building to the website.
So what was the problem?
The search engines quickly realized what was happening and penalized the website. But Google didn’t simply drop them in rankings, they completely removed the website from their indexes… right at the holidays. The graph above shows a 90-day ranking report for the company’s website, showing their website entered October strong, and dropped off the chart completely right at the end of December.
Do you think they saved any money? Shortcuts in our industry tend to lead to long-term headaches and expenses, so be skeptical when someone tells you they can do it for much less money. There is a good reason why!
