Search engine marketing (also known as SEM) – done correctly – can be a huge money-making opportunity for your business. Like anything, however, there are also many opportunities to lose your shirt. Sadly, as the search engine marketing industry “grows up”, the number of scams invented to rip off potential buyers will only increase.
The good news is that you should be able to recognize most search engine marketing scams within the first 30 seconds of reading an email or listening to a phone sales pitch. To that end, I’ve created a list of the top fifteen “warning signs” to look for when talking to someone about spending money on search marketing. Avoid these scams today and avoid learning the hard way later!
- “We Have 50 Billion Searches A Month” (But You’ve Never Heard Of Us): To paraphrase Mark Twain, there are lies, darn lies, and statistics. Any search engine that tries to lure you into a contract based on a huge number of searches is probably lying, or at best using a very loose interpretation of the word “searches” (for example, a pop-up might be considered a search). In general, if you haven’t heard of a company and they are claiming billions of unique visits, something is wrong. The end result for you will likely be lots of clicks, but few sales.
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