Is SEO a scam? While keyword researching, I stumbled across an SEO-related question that gets asked over 200+ times a month. I’m here to share with you my personal opinion/experience from running websites, providing services to clients, and purchasing services from ‘SEO agencies.’
What makes people think that SEO is a scam? It makes sense to me that some people believe that SEO is a scam, but it depends on where you come from. SEO is quite a broad term, but I’ll share with you what I’ve experienced and know.
From what I’ve seen, these scammy SEO examples include:
- You purchased a service from an SEO agency and received terrible results.
- You subscribed or paid for an SEO tool and felt deceived into purchasing something basic.
- You purchased a course only to end up with basic information you can find on the internet.
- You followed every step internet ‘gurus‘ told you to do, and you feel that it resulted in wasted time.
From my personal experience and what I see, doing anything online that requires you to spend money or earn money will likely attract scammers. Applying proper SEO to your website can lead to better results for your business, so I wouldn’t say that SEO is a scam.
Is it True That SEO is a Scam?
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a broad term that could be perceived as ‘scammy,’ depending on where you are in the field. SEO isn’t a scam because it works and could make an enormous difference to your company, increase exposure, and have many more benefits. SEO is only scammy, depending on who you decide to work with.
List of Reasons Why I Believe that SEO Isn’t a Scam
- Increase Visitors/Exposure: Proper SEO on your website will increase your targeted audiences. When you rank at the top of the search engines, people will become more aware of your website (company business, raising funds, increasing followers, etc.)
- Increase Sales: If you have a product that you want to promote, nothing beats passive and targeted traffic going to your website. I’ll use a “rainbow notebook” as an example. You created a notebook brand and decided to share it all over social media. However, you’re receiving zero or low orders. When you do SEO, like targeting certain keywords with volume, people interested in rainbow notebooks are likelier to buy.
- Increase Followers/Subscribers: Have you ever searched for something and often encountered the same website over and over? Maybe you encountered an individual blogger and became a fan of their work. Doing good SEO work can lead to an increase in subscribers or followers. Similar to collecting an email list, you’ll have an audience to promote your business and what you do.
Here are some reasons I believe why you feel that SEO is a scam.
1. Bad SEO Companies
Like everything else, there are good and bad SEO companies. Some SEO companies will promise you the world, only to end up with terrible results. To reduce your chances of dealing with bad SEO companies, you should always do your due diligence and read reviews.
You should always read reviews from a trusted source if you have zero SEO experience. I say this because I’ve seen some SEO companies use shady strategies to show good results until Google penalizes the website.
So if you purchase SEO services from a marketing company and notice positive results, you should still wait 3 months to a year before praising them. My younger self spent days reading and experimenting with black hat SEO and noticed that many marketing agencies apply these methods for quick results leading to downfall from a search engine penalty.
2. Bad SEO Course
There are many fake ‘gurus‘ out there promoting courses with the information readily available on the internet. When I say fake, I mean that there are internet gurus selling courses on something they hardly have experience in. Most of these guys are just good salespeople, so you must be careful.
While social media can be great, it has a dark side. For example, you feel convinced because of certain SEO product reviews. It would be best to learn to distinguish between a fake/real review because it’s often used as social proof marketing to increase sales.
Do I Need SEO For My Website?
If you want to increase your website’s viewership, sales, or anything related to increasing stats, then yes – you should apply SEO to your website. Applying proper SEO to your website by respecting the search engine’s guidelines will lead to long-term positive results.
Search Engine Guidelines
You can find many informative guides and even do it for free. If you’re planning to go with an SEO agency, you should at least compare the costs and learn about previous customers’ results.
If you don’t have a website blog for your portfolio yet, you can check out one of my SEO guides:
Is SEO Marketing a Scam?
SEO marketing isn’t a scam because doing search engine optimization will lead to an increase in visitors. The scammy part is who you’re dealing with along the way. Some SEO companies provide scammy services, while others provide great services.
Conclusion For “Is SEO a Scam”
SEO isn’t scammy, based on my experience. However, I’ve dealt with and seen scammy businesses/people. A better approach would be to learn the basics of SEO by going on forums, asking questions, and doing basic SEO work.
When you do basic SEO work for your website, you will at least understand the services you will receive. SEO does work. Once you get the basic SEO stuff down, you will eventually see more website visitors.
If you’d like to follow up on some of my journeys and content that I cover, you can check out:
You can learn more about search engine optimization (SEO) by watching a helpful YouTube video I found, “SEO in 5 Minutes: What is SEO and How Does it Work” from Simplilearn’s channel down below:
