Below are a few things to be on the lookout for when it comes to search engine marketing scams. You may be surprised at a few of them. You might even be doing them “unintentionally” and are not aware of the negative backlash your site will receive:

If a company claims that they will submit your website to let’s say 50,000 search engines or directories per month, a red flag should rise.

But why would you want to be submitted to this many sites, especially when the quality is not top-notch?

Another thing with submitting to tons of directories and search engines is that you won’t be getting the extra boost that you need. Your site will be associated with any and everything and mostly nothing to do with your content.

Example: Let's say I have a site promoting piano lessons....why would I want it submitted to a directory dealing with chainsaws????

Mass submissions also can hurt your search engine ranking. It will affect your popularity.

The main goal of link farms are to increase the link popularity of a website. The thought is that the more links you have to your site, the more respected your site seems on a search engine. They are not the best way to go….most of the links are not related to one another, therefore it is not beneficial to you.

Plus, search engines cannot stand link farms. In the long run, they will “punish” you for your efforts.

These pages appear for a moment, and then quickly go to another page.

This is frowned upon in the world of SEO and search engine spiders will punish you for it to.

Beware of companies and webmasters that try to “put one over on you.”

It is not uncommon to find trickery when you least expect it.

Some webmasters have begun to create web pages with hidden text.

This is a search engine no-no.

Web designers make the hidden text the same color as the background color.

This means when we go on the site, we can’t see the “fine print.”

You might have even stumbled on it by accident when highlighting various areas on a page.

Don’t try to pull the wool over the eyes of the search engine spiders.

Cloaking involves the process of making pages appear one way to a website user, but once they attempt to reach what they think they will be viewing, they will find a completely different page.