While this firm also promised hordes of traffic and top search engine listings, only significant traffic my friend ever got was garnered through pay-per-click. To make matters worse, SEO firm hid links to their sites throughout html of her website.

Another fault I found with SEO firm mentioned first in this article was search terms they crowed about taking first place for. To say least, they were rather obscure. It’s a pretty impressive accomplishment to come up first on web for search term “furniture” or even “log furniture”. But if you design a page that brings up your company first on Google for a search of “Birmingham Tuscaloosa Avenue Dry Cleaners”, big deal. And that’s what this SEO firm was doing.

Although I never seriously considered dropping $3000 or whatever it was for their services, final clincher came when I asked what type of traffic I could expect for digging into my pockets.

“I can get you an average of 100 hits per day,” he told me. Then he showed me stats on some of their clients sites that had, over course of a year, built up to 100 hits per day. I don’t know about you, but I want a lot more than 100 unique hits per day on my website. I’ve achieved those kinds of numbers—and better—by myself. Why should I pay them for what I consider to be mediocre results?

Don’t get me wrong. I do believe in SEO firms, and because of success I’ve been having on some of my top search terms, may engage in that business myself someday. But after researching issues carefully, I would warn fellow webmasters to beware of any SEO firm that:

• employs a boiler room full of telemarketers • automates most or all of their services • insists on gaining and retaining control of url to be promoted • focuses on lengthy and obscure search strings • touts sites that are garnering a mere 100 hits per day as examples of their success.

Of all bad practices mentioned above, one I found most offensive was idea that SEO firm should own or control my url. While owning url would seem like a good idea for SEO firm (they could always collect their fees by threatening to shut down site), it isn’t so nifty for client. If I pay a firm to build my business, I want them to do just that—build my business. To pay a firm to build traffic to a url they own is really like paying them to build their business—and that, in my opinion, is biggest SEO scam of all.