SEO Scammers Unveiled

If you own a small business website, do you regularly get solicitations to promote your website? I do... I exposed one here, and the perpetrator actually responded to my hub!  Read on down to the comments...

Here's the email I got, followed by the rip-off. 

"Dear National Association Members,

We can submit your Real Estate related website to Thousands of Real Estate Links or place Text Ads (similar to Google Adsense) on the main pages of our partner sites.

Your traffic will increase almost overnight with either program. To learn more about this program, please visit www.LinkedRE.com

Our partner sites and details about both programs can be found by clicking on the LinkedRE Partner Sites selection from the main menu. Regards, www.LinkedRE.com"

Sounds like a great idea, right? Read on...

Just for fun, I did a little research. Here's their offer, from their page:

"Receive Thousands of Links, for only $59.00 ! Offer valid thru 07/28/2009, Regular price $149.00 Lock in your link submittal rate today. (You may choose from a variety of link submittal plans after you fill out the registration form and click Submit.)

These are all seasoned sites and domain names with thousands of reciprocal links already in place on the Internet. Developed by Primec Real Estate Services, Inc., the Internet leader in the promotion and marketing of Real Estate professionals with over 30 years of Technical Experience and over 20 years of Real Estate experience.

By placing your link request with us you will be exposing your website to Thousands of both incoming and backward links. The Link to your website will be placed on each of the 14 Direct Top Level Domains listed above on their links page."

Their 14 "Direct Top Level Domains" are all owned by them. They are basically link lists, by state, from their sites back to Realtors' sites. Not even the opportunity to put in a few words about yourself!

Here's the ripoff.

1. All of the sites they'll list your URL on, are Google Page Rank 0. Granted, putting your links on their sites is better than nothing at all. But it won't get you much Google juice.Because Google doesn't pay much attention to them.
2. The few sites I checked don't even have a meta description to help Google classify that they're directory sites.
   
3. Because Google doesn't pay much attention to them, there's very little chance some consumer is gonna find their directories, and then lookup your site there.
   
4. Your link's anchor text? Your name. Big deal. Chances are unless you have a very common name, someone searching on your name is gonna find you on the first page of search results anyway. You don't need to spend $59 or $149 to have your name promoted. I'd bet you'd much rather show up in the search results when someone types in "your city.... homes for sale"? Or something similar. Right?
5. It's pretty well known that Google will "slap" you if you go from no links one day to a whole bunch of links the next day. Google sees it as an unnatural linkbuilding exercise, which it associates with "black hat" SEO techniques. There's a chance that by listing with them, your site will actually do worse in search engine rankings.
   

I was amazed, though, at how many Realtors are listed there. It irks the hell out of me to see so many people ripped off like this.

I wondered if they were fostering this same scam on other industries as well. So I did a bit more digging.

All the domains they're putting links on are owned by Primec Services in Thousand Oaks, CA. When I searched for Primec Services on Google, nothing came up. hmmmmmm......

The email contact on their whois record was support@pr1mehost.com. So I went to pr1mehost.com.

Their cheesy website promotes website hosting. No mention at all of any kind of SEO for Real Estate, or any other industry.

So I'm imagining a kid with a couple servers sitting in his bedroom, hosting a few of his buddy's websites; and making some good money for his college fund by scamming Realtors throughout the country.

Being a Realtor myself, I've already been "had" by several of these SEO scams.  I've shelled out well into the four figures, and seen no uptick in my site's number of visitors.

So I took matters into my own hands.  I studied SEO on several of the premier training sites, and started applying those techniques to my own Cincinnati Real Estate website; and my Cincinnati real estate blog.

Over a period of about 3 months, my website went from a Google page rank 0 to a PR2.  And the number of visitors and (more importantly) leads skyrocketed.  I've received more leads from my website since March 2009 (it's now June 2009) than I had in the 3-1/2 years previous since my site had been in operation. I stand to make two commissions this month alone from my website leads. 

And, I gotta tell you, I'm just getting started with SEO'ing my site.  My goal is to be, by the end of this year, having enough quality leads from my website that I don't have to do any other prospecting.

You can SEO your own website, too.

I'm a semi-active contributor on ActiveRain, to the SEO forum. When I posted a few SEO related articles there, I was amazed at the response from other Realtors.  People seemed truly interested in how I'd achieved those results from my site. 

So I decided to tell them.  I recently started a blog specifically titled SEO for Realtors, with the intent of helping other Realtors achieve similar results.

Knowing how time-crunched most active Realtors are, I'm trying to distill the essence of months of study of SEO techniques, and put it in easy-to-follow instructions.  I won't kid you... SEO takes some work.  But if you can devote 4-6 hours a week to SEO and follow the instructions on this site, watch your website stats.  Your website will start attracting more visitors within a few weeks of getting started!

This is a giveaway.

Real estate has been good to me.  I like it because I can help people.  The SEO for Realtors blog takes it to the next level for me.  If I can help other Realtors get more leads and increase their business, then I feel blessed.

Not just SEO for Realtors

The techniques I describe on the SEO for Realtors blog will work for any kind of website - not just Realtors. If you're interested in Real Estate Website SEO, or SEO for any other kind of site, please join me there today... take a look around, and let me know what you think.

To your wealth!