When you’re just starting out with your online business you will come across some major scams online. It’s important to be cautious when doing your research and selecting an online marketing company. You know the old saying “If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is“.
Everyday, we get emails from companies wanting to sell us their services. Things like outsourcing our work, SEO, lead generation and even signing up for business loans. We’ve gotten really good at spotting the scams, but if you’re new in business, it may not be as easy to spot what’s legitimate and what’s fake. Today, we’ll go over some of the most popular online scams so you don’t fall victim to them.
Logos:
When you are in the market for a new logo, you will find people who will do it for very cheap. This is because they aren’t creating you a unique logo, they are using cookie cutter logo software to create your logo in a matter of minutes.
If you choose one of these cheap logo services, you will no doubt start to see logos very similar to yours online. This will kill your branding and online reputation. We can spot these logos from a mile away and I believe some of your customers will also.
When creating your logo and brand, you need to find a company that will offer you a personalized experience. They should be invested in learning about your business and what makes you unique. They will then be able to design something that 100% unique for your brand.
Social Media Followers:
When you are starting to setup your social media accounts, it’s tempting to purchase social media followers. We can tell you that this is 100% the wrong way to grow your social media followers. It needs to grow organically. If you find a service that helps grow your social media followers it goes against the terms of service for all the social media platforms. They will eventually find out that you purchased followers and can terminate your account and you will have to start from scratch.
It doesn’t make any sense to purchase followers because they won’t engage in your content. You need people to engage in your content to help grow your brand. This is especially true on your Youtube channel.
SEO:
Scam SEO services are the most common scam that we see people fall for. We will be 100% honest with you, most SEO companies are a scam. We have been doing web development since the mid 90’s and we have never purchased “SEO” and will never recommend you purchase “SEO”.
The old school days of hiring an “SEO expert” to stuff keywords and try to outsmart the search engines are over. Believe it or not but a lot of “SEO experts” still think they can outsmart Google. If you’re not aware Google changes its search algorithm around 500–600 times a year! It’s literally impossible to keep up with the algorithm changes these days.
SEO is a totally different thing these days. It’s all about creating solid consistent content and a good user experience. There’s no “magic pill” to rank well in Google. You will need to consistently create useful content and focus on your website performance and mobile experience to rank well in Google. Visit our blog article WordPress SEO Tips 2019 to learn more about what you can do to help with your website performance.
Note: Run away from any SEO company that promises page/rank #1. Nobody can make those promises! Think about this for a minute, if 11 SEO companies promise you page #1 rankings won’t one of those companies not be able to deliver on their promise? Now multiply that promise by all the thousands of SEO companies that offer you that fake promise.
Lead Generation:
This is the easiest thing to spot as a scam because all these lead generation promises are simply just selling you a dream of wealth and success. Nobody can offer you solid leads because each business is unique and only you will know how/where your customers are. These guys work on a very simple business model, they find people who don’t want to put in the hard work to find leads and will sell you a fake dream.
Websites:
This scam is something that we see way too often. I can’t count how many people we have helped out after they hired a horrible website company. These companies don’t care about being professional or the end product, all they care about is making money. They know it’s a race to the bottom to compete for the best price, they have automated systems that will help them create websites in minutes.
Choosing a good website company is like choosing a good doctor. You should do your research and not take the cheapest route, because in the long run it will cost you more money.
Make sure that when you hire a web design company that they are a good match and are invested in helping your business grow. Here at Wicky Design we will meet you in person or virtually to see if we are a good match for your business. We take customer service very seriously and believe this is what makes us stand out.
Don’t fall for these types of online scams. Always do your due diligence when hiring a company to do business with.
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