SuperSmartSEO

Here I am in order to resolve one very simple question for you. Just exactly why is there so much shiftiness in the new world of SEO? Why is it such a given that any time you go looking to get yourself found in search engines, there are dozens of people out there, holding the happy banner of SEO at unfair prices?

Crises Make People Crazy

The answers aren’t difficult at all, but it’s important you get them. Why, you might ask? Because—and most definitely during a crisis—when otherwise normal people get desperate, the little fish make bad decisions and the unreliable people start preying.

The Two Reasons You Need to Understand

So: there are two essential explanations for the crappy atmosphere that is everywhere in the marketplace online. One is simply historical. There have always been guys who have tried to make money from nothing, and looking back, they have profited from desperate periods very analogous to this one.

Our second point is the idea of optimization and selling advertisements online. Simply by virtue of what it is, it attracts a certain type. This doesn’t mean you won’t come upon tons of solid SEO companies—definitely not, as there are many honest folks. But the world of advertisement has never lured entirely honest people across the board. There are a million shifty salesmen out there, as we all know. The internet isn’t exempt from this.

Learning From Old History

So, assuming we start with the historical reasons first. In depressions, people aren’t always at 100%. 1930s America isn’t simply a rough period in time, but it’s full of preachers, hucksters, and scammers everywhere, preying on people’s desperation. Ever seen that HBO series called Carnivale? Its group of principal characters is made up of these archetypes.

Take that historical scene and mix it with some of the fundamental reasons we’re in this crisis, mainly the concept that it’s easy to earn cash without putting the work in (one of the main explanations behind the mortgage crisis), and you’ve got a recipe for scammers.

Same Promises, Same Scam

Shifty SEO companies profit from this sad reality by making the identical promises that hucksters have been dumping on us for as long as we can remember. They make the grand promise that there’s a massive market just sitting there waiting to be monetized, and claim there are great profits to be made, cash that’s not really there in the first place. You just need to pay them to get access to this mysterious profit stream, which, and this they never explain, they aren’t just keeping secret if it’s so lucrative.

The idea is that you can create a network of god knows what, and the visitors that never really arrive will drive enough advertising dollars for you to commence receiving heavy payouts in the morning while you have your coffee.

Links to the Abyss

Just what this huge mix of dubiously put-together content is isn’t really specified, and that’s exactly what they want. As long as you’re handing over cash to the optimization guys, that’s all they really care about (and thus you are the only cash source here).

If your magic profits never arrive, they can’t really be forced to explain, because there was never any guarantee at the beginning anyway. There are a million ways to obscure your dearth of profits.

Gamblers and Advertisers

Then we have our second fundamental reason: the heart of SEO and advertising itself. Publicity has always been a dicey game, and SEO and paid search is not exempt from this mentality.

Of course with the rise in the incredible amount of analytic data available to us , SEO now can be more transparent than ever.

There have always been crappy agencies ready to take your money, but now with the freedom of the online world, they’ve multiplied ridiculously.

Look in Your Mailbox Sometime and Understand the Heart of Spam

Check this out: the US Postal Service passes on massive, massive low rates for big amounts of post. Essentially, this is junk mail, or spam, but slightly less irritating because it arrives in your post-box instead of your email inbox (maybe it’s more irritating, to tell the truth).

If the US Postal Service is essentially just a funnel for spam a large part of the time, think of what must happen with the hidden nature the internet gives you. The quantity of potential dicey characters simply grows until we can’t even contemplate it.

Just don’t let that take you away from the fact that the online advertising world is a legitimate business concern—they are the ad agencies of the coming years. Choose a real, established, and white-hat one!