Does the SEO on your website break Google’s rules?

I recently received a call from a prospect in the Syracuse, NY area who is unhappy with the company doing their search engine optimization. In quickly reviewing their site and code, I found a hidden link to a 3rd party SEO site and service. This is a BIG no-no with Google’s guidelines and may have lead to penalties for their site. It’s against Google’s rules to hide links and even worse that it was a link back to a site that the SEO business is benefiting from and not the client.

After talking to the prospective client I learned they had a independent guy or freelancer doing the SEO, didn’t get results, and then had a local IT company take it over. While it may have been the low cost freelancer using the questionable practice of hiding his links in client sites, the IT company should have removed it. In either case, a reputable SEO company should show results through reporting using Google Analytics, ranking reports and other tools, so you’ll know if you’re getting effective SEO services.

We recently completed a 3 month round of search engine optimization for a brand new business in Syracuse and the results were better than expected. For about a dozen keywords related to their industry in Syracuse, they appear on the first page of Google, and almost all keywords are at least on the top to middle of the second page. In some cases they’re the ONLY actual store on the first page – the rest being Yelp, review sites, directories, etc. Being a brand new site and domain, this is VERY good. Needless to say their traffic is growing significantly month to month, and especially their organic search traffic. Part of this is also due to a strong social media strategy.

Just a few days ago we received a thank you from another new business we helped launch with a new site and SEO last year. She wrote:
The site is doing well and the business is doing really well too… Wanted to thank you for setting up the site the way you did, I could not have done it without you.
– Brandy, CalcsUnlimited.com (#2 on Google for ‘rent a graphing calculator’)

If you’d like to a FREE review of your site to see if your SEO is effective – and if you have anything that is against Google’s guidelines – please call 315.876.9607, or email info@lerentech.com. I can also share with you the results we’ve had for other clients.