That didn’t last long. To start of 2013 we had a little shake up in the rankings for the keyword “SEO Company”. The keyword “SEO Company” is arguably the hardest keyword within the SEO community to rank for along with “SEO Services” and “Search engine Optimization”. According to Google these SEO keywords are the most sought after keywords due to the amount of search volume that is generated with each key phrase. This is how the three keywords get broken down.
For months there have been some suspicious companies that have popped up to rank for the keyword “SEO Company” in particular, which raised a lot of eyebrows within the online community. After a couple of months of holding the top position certain companies are no longer ranking for that monster keyword.
At Noxster we have been monitoring it for quite some time. A couple of things that stood out to us that we found to be very suspicious not knowing what we know now include:
- Within one month of owning the domain the URL was a PR 7.
- Web Design altered after 2 weeks of popping up.
- The website had over 300k backlinks linking towards it with only two major anchor-texts.
- When you check the backlinks they were nowhere to be found.
- The website had very little content compared to the competition.
- They had a keyword cloud that was an image which should have had zero SEO value.
- The contact us page looked scandalous.
The one thing that we found to be most interesting about this particular SEO case study is the fact that they actually held the top SEO position for roughly 5+ months. We estimated the lifespan of these tactics to last maybe 4-6 weeks max.
The most unfortunate part about this incident is that the company actually had clients, and convinced new clients that they were the most ethical SEO Company on the web. Whether they performed the same SEO methodologies to their client base is undetermined, and to be frank is not for us to say. It is possible they did utilize these tactics knowing they would be hit with the penalty and it was an attempt to increase their lead generation for a short amount of time.
The biggest problem that we have with this methodology is it gives SEO companies and our industry a bad reputation. It is the biggest reason why the decision making process is justifiably as long as it is, because there is no other industry like it.
The biggest value proposition an SEO Company or a company offering SEO services could offer you is transparency. Ranking Reports and empty promises can be delivered by any company. Make sure you ask valuable questions, so you protect your biggest investment online, your website.
For more in-depth knowledge about this particular SEO tactics being used and a couple other companies that could possibly be in the wrong click here.