Avoiding SEO packages scams in this digital age isn’t easy. While the cheaper price may sound budget-friendly for the moment, it costs a lot in the long run. From ensuring website traffic and #1 Google ranking in the blink of an eye, there’s so much that comes with SEO packages scams.
To protect yourself from the detrimental aspects of SEO scams, you can hire a reputable SEO company in Dubai. Going through this blog will also help you to understand how SEO packages scams work to damage your digital footprint and what you can do to avoid them.
15 Ways SEO Packages Scams Ruin Your Website’s SEO
Scammers Approach Via Cold Emails
Perhaps the first step in SEO packages scams is cold emailing. SEO scammers usually approach potential victims through cold emails. Sending out emails offering their best SEO packages and services, these scammers use sketchy emails typically having the @gmail addresses. Not only does it make it hard for the victim to trace the scammers’ digital footprint, but it also complicates any business association. Suppose there is a website available, chances are slim that there will be lists, owners, staff, and address.
Fake Analysis Reports Attached to Emails
If the cold email doesn’t offer cheap SEO packages prices, it will show you fabricated website details and fake rankings to convince you to buy their services. Images of technical proof suggesting that the analyzer did a thorough check of your website will be typically attached, and a call-to-action (CTA) to buy their product. Fake images are quite persuasive and often lead individuals to purchase the services without double checking. This is far from the truth as SEO packages scams do not include tailored reviews of websites before sending out emails.
Recurring Monthly Fees for Unsolicited Work
Most SEO packages scams come with hefty charges for unnecessary work. These might include hidden charges at the end of the month that were not discussed with the website owner. While this practice is legitimately used by authentic SEO specialist in Dubai, scammers charge extra for unnecessary work. Remember, a reliable digital marketing agency in Dubai won’t charge extra or hide fees for their digital marketing and SEO services.
Guaranteed Rankings
One thing about SEO packages scams is that their pitch is convincing. These scammers will ensure that your page ranks #1 on Google within a certain time frame. This, however, is far from the truth. Here’s the twist, even Google cannot predict with 100% guarantee which page will rank on top. Google ranks pages based on user’s search query and intent and decides which search result falls on the merits.
Providing Fake Google Lighthouse Report
Site loading speed is a deciding factor in better ranking and optimization. SEO packages scams play with this factor and attach fake Google Lighthouse reports suggesting that your website’s loading speed is poor.
For those who don’t know, Google Lighthouse is a web performance measurement tool to check site loading speed, along with other metrics. These scams will pitch you to avail their SEO packages to restore website loading speed and fix other virtual problems. These images and reports are fake and made to trap individuals.
Promise Backlinks from High-DA Sites
Understanding this factor might be a little tricky. Before explaining, here is a quick overview of what each term stands for and its significance in SEO.
DA stands for “Domain Authority.” Website DAs aren’t technically helpful in ranking on Google, however, some professional marketing tools consider DA. Now the question is; Why is DA important? For link building. Link-building is a legitimate marketing strategy to expand digital footprint and gain traction, but low-quality sites can ruin your SEO game.
Scammers offer to check out their price list of high-DA sites assuring backlinks. Here’s the problem; Paying for links is against Google’s guidelines. Participating in these link schemes can ruin your SEO. Efficient SEO agency in Dubai know these factors beforehand and won’t put your website in danger.
Using Money anchors
SEO packages scams involve spammers and/or inexperienced marketers using transactional keywords (“75% discount on THIS product”) when getting backlinks for you on other sites. When done repeatedly, Google senses something is off about your site, ultimately jeopardizing your brand’s online presence.
Showing Fake Traffic
Some scammers will ensure website traffic through cheap SEO packages in Dubai. These scammers employ bots for your website to gain traction. However, Bots don’t sign up for newsletters, read articles/blogs, or buy products/services. So even if this traffic occurs, there won’t be any benefits.
Offering Cheap SEO Packages
Cheap SEO packages are rarely beneficial. The cost might seem attractive, but the services are poor. Cheap packages harm your website’s ranking and overall health in the long run. In SEO, quality comes with a price tag. This is why you need to invest in quality SEO services for sustainable growth and online visibility.
Supporting PBNs and Recycled Content
Whereas there are private blog networks, or PBNs, offering links to trustworthy sites with data and information, the majority of PBNs were originally designed for fake promotion of meaningless partnerships to raise their relevance for Google, therefore their content is poor.
Dead-End Doorway Pages
One of the most detrimental aspects of SEO packages scams is employing doorway pages. These pages are websites designed with the sole aim of ranking highly for specific search queries with the goal of driving users to their client’s site. This is a dirty trick and does not give the better sites a position at the top of the SERPs.
Overloading search engine queries with similarly created and structured web pages all linked to the same destination confuses search engine spiders, eventually bringing down the ranking of the client’s website as a whole. When there are homepages for a website, fewer is better; literally just one suffices.
Profile Password Hoarders
Out of all the SEO packages scams, password and profile hoarding is the most damaging. Companies should steer clear of any SEO firm that requires ownership of the URL, social media profiles, and Google Analytics data. The digital assets should be under the business owner’s control.
Using Hidden Text and Links
Back when search engines relied on simple text matching algorithms to decide the efficacy of a website, a spam technique was created that tricked web page crawlers into believing there was more information and more resources on a web page than there really was.
By placing relevant industry keywords and links all the way at the bottom in the same color as the background, the content was still applicable to Google web crawlers, but it was practically invisible to human visitors. Google has since become enlightened of this tactic and reprimands all websites that take part in unethical SEO practices.
Employing Surprise Redirects
Although this can be done for valid purposes such as rebranding and page consolidation, redirecting a visitor to another URL than the one they originally requested is generally not advisable. This link hiding tactic is employed to deceive the search engine spiders into assigning a different type of content to that site through its “partnerships” and area of influence.
SEO spammers will likely sell this strategy as an excellent method of acquiring credibility and better ranks on (search engine result pages) SERPs, but the moment Google and their customers find out, the damage is done, and it might last forever.
Shadow Domains & Phantom Pages
The building of these domains and pages is another method of misleading search engine web crawlers into believing that the page contains far more quality information than it contains. Much of this is accomplished through the practice of cloaking website data with code and is akin to wearing various masks on a website based on who or what is viewing it.
When sites behind cloaks are accessed, they can display a page of HTML to web crawlers and display a page of images to people, or place keywords on a page only when the user agent is a web crawler and not a person. Presenting differing content and links to people and search engines is commonly employed by SEO scammers.
