There’s many big name companies that offer search engine optimization. Some offer both organic and local services to entice their customers to sign-up. However, just because these big name companies are successful in one area doesn’t necessarily mean they can successfully optimize your website. Here are just a few services from popular companies that I’d urge you and my clients to stay away from:

GoDaddy

I love GoDaddy, I think they’re a great domain name registrar, in fact, I’ve registered many domain names with GoDaddy. They also offer their customers a $2.99 per month service, that let’s you sign up for their GoDaddy SEO services. With this service they will submit your website to search engines and then create a sitemap, on top of that they give you a few keywords too. However, unless you’re selling ice cream in Farson, Wyoming (Yes, there is a Farson, WY and Yes, they serve the biggest and best ice cream cones in the world), this service isn’t going to do anything for you. On top of that, services like this lead misinformed business owners to believe paying $300+ a month for real local SEO is ridiculous. Stay away from something that sounds too good to be true, this service offering by GoDaddy isn’t anywhere close to being a real SEO service.

Here’s What GoDaddy Offers:

Yellow Pages

Oh yeah, let’s invest our online budget with a phone book company, that’s OK right? Well just like GoDaddy, their service offers very little in terms of legitimate SEO. However, Yellow Pages SEO packages start at $295 per month rather than the $2.99 a month GoDaddy plan… so if you want to try one of them I’d urge you to waste your money with GoDaddy before suggesting the Yellow Pages SEO services.

Yelp

What’s a nice way of saying “Hate”? How about I really can’t stand Yelp. There’s been a lot of publicity recently about why others can’t too.

Yelp is a huge online directory that lists local businesses by their location. Their service allows registered users to post reviews about their experience with the business. Their goal is to drive local customers to your website and adding a link, also known as a citation, to your website. The main issue I have with Yelp is that they knowingly filter customer reviews and generally display only the worst ones. Even though they make claims that most reviews are filtered to ensure the trustworthiness of those reviews, the real truth is, they show the worst reviews and then offer businesses a paid service which magically allows the bad reviews to disappear and the good reviews to bubble to the top of the business listing. If it sounds like a type of extortion that’s because it is. I beg you DON’T PAY FOR YELP!

Yext

Now here’s an up and comer that I feel is worthy of adding to this list. The Yext service is geared specifically towards local SEO. They allow you to submit your NAP data to 47 different directory sites with a single submission. That’s cool! But, what’s uncool is that it will cost you $500 per year for those 47 listings. Your $500 can stretch much farther by building manual links to your website with a local and reputable SEO company. On top of that, numerous Yext users have been reporting that they are losing their listings, finding their listings locked by the various directories, and even finding the wrong data on their listings once they unsubscribe to the Yext service. Talk about a local SEO headache! Spend your money wisely and just hire a knowledgeable local SEO company.

These four SEO services are just a few of the pointless SEO companies I strongly suggest you avoid. When you are looking for legitimate SEO services, find a reputable company, ask for examples, and ask them what methods they use.

Best of luck in successfully optimizing your website!