Don’t ruin your reputation online
February 5, 2020
By Katie Ritchie and Jerry Bellune
Business owners know the importance of a strong online presence, says our ace Tech Talk columnist Katie Ritchie. Even if you don’t sell online, a website acts as a virtual business card and says you’re legitimate.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) makes LexingtonChronicle.com come up 1st on “Lexington SC newspaper” searches.
Think of SEO as the grade Google, Bing, Yahoo and other search engines give websites. The better your site’s grade, the higher your site appears in search results.
Back-link scammers and questionable marketing agencies cheat. One of the top 3 metrics search engines use to grade sites is how many back-links they have.
The scam usually comes in an email. It sounds legitimate. They offer to pay you to post a relevant article. All you do is accept their money and post a link to the article.
What’s the harm? Links from well-ranked sites like yours endorse the scammer. The higher your rank, the more credence Google will give to the endorsement. They will boost the scammer’s credibility for a time.
When the search engine robots catch on they will demote the scammer’s site and penalize you for endorsing them.
Moral of the story: If you don’t know them, ignore them.
A bonus: For details about our 3-CD “Make Yourself a STAR (Someone They Always Remember)” self-study course, you can email [email protected] .
Copyright 2020, The Bellune Co., Inc.
