Search engine scams

<p>The letter smacked of urgency. "Attention: Important Notice." "Act Today!" "PLEASE COMPLETE AND RETURN ENTIRE FORM." "Make Checks Payable to: DOMAIN REGISTRATION."</p><p>Jim Theile peered over the letter in the back office of his lamp shop in Santa Rosa. If he didn't pay $169, it appeared he would lose his domain www.lampandshade.com.</p><p>The letter was downright confusing, Theile thought. It seemed to say his Web site would not appear in online search results unless he sent in a check.</p><p>"It just didn't sit well," he said. "The hackles on my back really went up."</p><p>The letter was misleading at best -- a downright scam at worst. It listed no Web site, and offered only the address and phone number for a processing center in New York.</p><p>"I realized they were just selling a search listing," Theile said. "Basically, they just want you to send a check. Who knows what, if anything, they actually do."</p><p>Perhaps no area online is more maligned with shysters aiming to rip off small businesses than the field of search engine optimization -- a legitimate industry intended to help businesses get their Web sites ranked higher in search results by Google, Yahoo and others.</p><p>As search engine optimization has become an increasingly important issue for small-business owners, its technical complexities have opened the doors wide for scammers who prey on people's ignorance about the evolving technology.</p><p>Search engine optimization, or SEO for short, primarily deals with the design and management of Web sites. In other words, SEO professionals provide tips on how to build and manage your Web site so that Google is more likely to rank it higher when someone searches for keywords that apply to the site.</p><p>For instance, if you own a Santa Rosa bakery specializing in wedding cakes, then you want your Web site to be at the top of Google results for the keywords "Santa Rosa wedding cakes."</p><p>A properly designed Web site, which includes these keywords, is the first step in getting a good rank.</p><p>But some unscrupulous characters promise to vault your business to the top of search results, if only you'll pay them a few thousand dollars.</p><p>There are three things a prospective SEO company might say that should raise a red flag.</p><p>If a company guarantees to get your Web site listed in the top 10 of a Google search, then just walk away, because that's a bad sign, said Miriam Ellis, an SEO consultant in Petaluma.</p><p>"We don't control the search engines. We can't guarantee that," said Ellis, owner of Solas Web Design.</p><p>Also, if a company says it will submit your Web site to search engines, that's a bad sign too.</p><p>"You don't have to submit your Web site to search engines. Search engines crawl sites," Ellis said. "If they say otherwise, it's a deal breaker. Walk away."</p><p>To be clear, someone can submit a newly registered Web site so Google will crawl it sooner, but it would happen shortly anyway. And Google doesn't charge a fee either way.</p><p>Finally, an SEO company needs to provide referrals. If they can't provide a list of clients, it's not a good sign, Ellis said.</p><p>Theile gets contacted six times a month from people wanting to redesign his Web site, or optimize it for better rankings on search engines such as Google and Yahoo. Some are legitimate operations, but many are just hustlers.</p><p>"They are trying to take advantage of people, especially people who are older," Theile said. "We have to be cautious, because it happens so often you might make a mistake and be taken advantage of."</p><p>Ranking high in search results is becoming increasingly important to small business owners as potential customers turn to Google to find a local business, eschewing the well-worn phone book.</p><p>Google, which is used for about 70 percent of online searches in the United States, uses a highly-guarded equation that factors in several variables to determine how a site is ranked. But there are three main areas it looks at, Ellis said.</p><p>Older domain names are ranked more favorably by Google.</p><p>Sites rank higher when other sites link to them, especially if the other sites also rank high. This is called "Google juice."</p><p>Sites that have lots of text with keywords will rank higher for those words. So if the owner of a wedding cake business blogged about her experience baking wedding cakes on her business's Web site, it would more likely appear higher in searches for the words "wedding cake."</p><p>Ellis specializes in what is called local SEO, which is when businesses want to attract local customers to their site. She provided some tips on how to do that:</p><p>Go to maps.google.com and click on "Put your business on Google Maps." Make sure your business is listed, fix any errors, and authenticate you are the owner. It's free.</p><p>Then go to Yahoo, MSN, Citysearch, Yelp, Yellowpages.com and other sites and do the same thing. Make sure your business phone number, address and Web site are all included and correct.</p><p>"The more you have on these other sites, the better impression it will give Google as to where it should rank you," she said.</p><p>The chief reason a Web site might not get properly ranked is it is not built correctly. Sites must be designed with SEO in mind. Otherwise Google might have trouble indexing the site, and then rank it lower.</p><p>Once the Web site is properly designed to be crawled by search engine spiders, which do the virtual indexing, small-business owners can take the next step in SEO, said Jamie Lowe, an SEO consultant who runs www.searchenginemarketing.com.</p><p>First, people should consider what keywords they want associated with their Web site. It's best to find niche keywords such as "Santa Rosa auto mechanic," because broad keywords, such as just "mechanic," are already associated with other Web sites.</p><p>"A local small business can find hundreds of small niches," Low said.</p><p>To help find good keywords for a small business Web site, Low recommends these online tools:</p><p>www.google.com/sktool</p><p>www.keyworddiscovery.com</p><p>www.wordtracker.com</p><p>Developing good search results is the most cost-effective way to market online, Low said.</p><p>Sitting in his lamp shot on Fourth Street, Jim Theile said he had no plans to spend money on SEO -- and for good reason. The site, which he launched in 1997, already ranks No. 1 on Google when using the keywords "Santa Rosa lamps."</p><p>"The man who built my Web site, he did a good job," Theile said.</p><p>You can reach Staff Writer Nathan Halverson at 521-5494 or nathan.halverson@pressdemocrat.com. Check out his blog at DailyGeek.Pressdemocrat.com or on twitter.com/eWords</p>