Recently I’ve had two different people approach me about building links to their websites to get them to rank higher in the search engines. The first was a realtor who got this unsolicited email:
Subject: I looked at your website please read
I looked at your website and ran a scan to see how it ranks on major search engines. The website function with the Major search engines is way off. You really need a few simple changes to help your website.You have only a few inbound links when you should have thousands.
I create these.The top 20 search engines evaluate your sites performance based on how many you have.This determines your rankings.You have to submit your site to as many search engines as possible around the world and often.If not then the website will stay ranking far below the top 2 pages of major search engines.
I was in real estate for over 15 years and am a computer expert. I can help your website. Your site also needs your meta tags changed. I do this for my clients for free. I provide free content and a good recipe database to draw clients.I am running A special right now. A one time fee. I understand that Realtors don’t print money at home so that’s why I am affordable.
This is the only way for your website to work properly. No monthly costs, lets have a chat.
So what’s wrong? How would taking this person up on their proposal hurt my realtor friend?
First – you don’t need to submit your site to the search engines at all. Here’s where Google itself says that you don’t need to submit your site, and that most sites are not submitted. Yes, you can help Google find your site faster, but odds are the major search engines will find you. (The ones that don’t probably aren’t too important anyway.)
Second – and what this person didn’t tell my realtor friend (or simply didn’t notice) – the realtor doesn’t have their own website that is unique to the search engines. They have a site that their real estate company provides, with a URL something like: http://www.bobsmith.real-estate-company.com.
The search engines don’t see that site as distinct because it ISN’T – it’s actually part of (a subdomain of) the real-estate-company.com site. There are LOTS of realtors who have sites (subdomains) on real-estate-company.com (obviously, I’m not using the actual real estate company here in this example!) No matter how many search engines you submit that site to, it will make little to no difference in the search engine rankings.
What the realtor really needs to do is build their own site, on their own domain, separate from the real estate company’s site, if they want to take advantage of leads from the search engines. (And yes, I can build a very effective site for a realtor!)
SO… paying someone to submit your sites to the search engines is a waste of money, pure and simple.