Knowing the five ways most often used by SEO companies to ripoff customers will keep you and any SEO involved person from falling for the dirty fouls. These fouls not only rip you off now, some can hurt your website in future search situations.

1) Companies that make a guarantee to get your webpage a certain number of first page search engine rankings within a set amount of time. This is one of the ripoffs most used and least understood by SEO beginners. It's easy to get some of your pages to appear on a major search engine's first page - but is it for keyword searches that help you directly? Being number 1 for "hamster parachutes" doesn't necessarily drive traffic to your page, nor does it create sales - which is the real goal here.

2) Companies that claim your "new" website is being held up in the "search engine indexing process." This ripoff is used by companies to stall for more time and money from you. Had the company told you this in advance, as they should have, they could have implemented necessary plans to get your site some traffic sooner. These companies are afraid of losing clients but they don't want to tell you the big picture or put in the necessary work right away.

3) Companies blaming poor website SEO optimization for poor performance in search and traffic. This is usually followed by offering expensive and nebulous website optimization services as well as stalling for time on your contract.

4) Companies selling expensive "search engine submission services" to customers who don't realize that 95% of search goes through the big 3 Search Engines - Google, MSN, and Yahoo! And it is very easy and quick to submit your website to these three search engines.

5) Companies that recommend a complete website "rebuild" to every customer. Very few websites actually need this complete service at all, but under the guise of making your website more "search-friendly" you get a big ticket contract offer. Most websites can be freshened up with some better search-friendly features for relatively little expense - and this is where shopping around pays off.

Many SEO companies are doing a good job at a reasonable price. The ones who take time to explain SEO, what they will do, and the total cost - should get your attention as real competitors for your SEO dollars. Ask questions, shop around, request legitimate testimonials.

Arthur Browning Web Templates Blog Design Interviews Template Monster Arthur Browning began his career teaching technical writing in a small midwestern university for 15 years. He later editted and published a national professional journal for some ten years. He is now an investor. His interests include art collecting, web marketing, writing.