Is the firm "Top Website Placement" a fraud? I contacted both Google and Yahoo! and they never heard of them.

In fact, both firms said that they have no program that lets you get "locked into a particular spot."

This company guarantees placement on first page of Yahoo, Bing and Google! How can it be a fraud? That is why you use your credit card, if your not happy, cancel payment. They have 1000's of happy customers!

Report or look them up on,
www.ripoffreport.com
If other have been defrauded, they may have a listing.

Absolutely! I looked at their site, www.topwebsiteplacement.com, and they are a complete fraud. I work for Google and can tell you that what they say they do - lock you into a position - is impossible. These guys belong behind bars.

I never heard of them but there are hundreds of SEO companies around. SEO companies cannot promise any top placements as they do not own the search engines. But you need a new

Here's a warning sign: If the company promises you top search engine rankings by writing good meta tags only, get out of there! The meta tags (i.e. hidden codes in the webpage HTML) are actually not that important any longer, and some search engines ignore the keyword meta tag altogether.

Some search engine optimization companies will develop several so-called doorway pages optimized for particular search engines, and ask you to put them on your website. This may work if they know what they are doing. Be aware, though, that search engines like Google and AltaVista hate plain doorway pages for which the only function is to rank high in search engine results.

These are normally pages with no or few graphics, containing no significant information. They have only one objective: to lure visitors into other sections of your site. Some of the pages might be quite similar, the only variation being the main keyword phrase (i.e words from the searcher's search query). If Google find such pages, your site might be banned from their index. You don't want that, as Google is the most important search engine to be listed in these days.

Please note that some SEO companies will suggest that you "cloak" your pages, i.e. using computer scripts to serve the search engines doorway pages different from the real pages shown to your regular visitors. It is not worth the risk!

On the other hand, if the search engine optimization company suggests that you should fine tune your regular pages while targeting specific keywords, or that you should make new content-rich pages that can be used for this purpose, do go along! The search engines are looking for useful content.

Please note that some search engine optimization companies will put doorway pages on their own servers. This may sound as a sensible idea, as it will appear as if these pages do not belong to your site. In this way the search engines will not punish you if they find them. On the other hand, if your relationship with this company ends, you will also loose all the traffic generated by these pages.

Costs
Hiring search engine optimization experts does not come cheap. Still, good rankings may lead to a large increase in visitors, and -- hopefully -- new happy customers.

According to promotion expert Susan O'Neil, author of Maximize Search Engine Traffic, a typical small or medium business may expect to pay USD 5,000 to 30,000 per year depending on the size of the site and the competitiveness of the keywords.

On the other hand, if you are going to do this in-house, it will require two to four months' full-time effort by an inexperienced person (plus cost of training), and 5 -15 hours per week maintenance during the ensuing 6 months. (see About interview).

We will add that you may get away with less if you already know a bit about search engines, and are willing to follow the "pragmatic" approach to search engines, i.e. you optimize your pages for search engines in general, and do not try to target the individual search engine.

Robin Nobles, Director of Training at the Academy of Web Specialists, says that "Actually, there isn't a 'typical' fee structure, since charges can range from a couple of hundred dollars to over $50,000 to position a site."

He adds that "some positioning packages include purchasing additional domains; hosting pages on their own server; using cloaking strategies; creating numerous doorway or information pages; offering continued maintenance; and so forth, where other positioning packages only offer to make a few doorway pages and slap them up, not even worrying about the ranking."(*)

Indeed, some search engine optimization companies will offer lower fees, especially if you are willing to do some of the work yourself.

When calculating the effective costs of such an effort, remember that your optimization program must be considered part of your advertising campaign. The question is: How much can you afford to spend on marketing all in all?

Your contribution
If the search engine optimization company is to succeed, you must offer your co-operation. They will do most of the work, but unless you are willing to give them free reins on your website (risky!), you must at least spend some time on this project.

The "optimizers" will normally have to re-write some of your webpage copy, and probably also write some more. If they are good at what they do they will tell you and your writers how to write keyword rich text without spamming the search engines.

If your pages are heavy with graphics, Shockwave and Flash plug-ins, the optimizers may ask you to take some of them out.

You'd better listen. It is text that brings you pages to the top in search engines, not fancy animations. By the way, visitors also normally prefers information to slow loading designer show-offs.

Where to look
There are so many ranking and submitting services out there, that there is no way we can list them here. You will find a large number in the Pandia Plus Directory, and you may also take a look at our list of selected search engine optimization companies.

We often recommend a company called 1st Search Ranking for this kind of work. Their president, Sumantra Roy, is known as one of the best contributors to online information on search engine optimization But do look around!

Topher gave you good advice and if you check, they do have reports on www.ripoffreport.com. Now, that does not mean they are definitely a fraud, as anybody can post something on that site or any blog. However, they are re-iterating your concern and when I looked at their site, it seemed awfully Mickey Mouse for a firm who supposedly could do such a great thing as to "lock you into a position" on Google and Yahoo. So, my advice would be to stay away.

Even though you are now aware of the fact that TopWebsitePlacement is a fraud, you should consider search engine optimization (SEO) of your website which truly promotes your web business. You are invited to read the following strategy.

With 85% of Internet surfers using search engines/directories such as Google, Yahoo or MSN to find goods and services, it is very important to promote one's website by first publishing one's domain named website on these major search directories. To publish your website's domain name for FREE at Google's search directory, visit "http://google.com/addurl/?continue=/add... and fill-in the form. In another way, Google, Yahoo or MSN provide a Yellow Pages kind of advertisement for every website according to a set of ranking protocols. And there's where web designers and search engine optimizers play an critical role in marketing websites which in turn, display goods and services to be discovered [via search directories] by the rest of the world. The greater the appearance or presence that one's website can generate on search directories, the greater number of customers will accordingly visitor one's website.

As for the cost to market one's website via the Internet and more particularly -- search directories, will depend initially with the proper design of webpages and the proper placement of metatags which are: <Title>, <Description> and <Keywords>.

A searchable <Title> would be "[name of the goods/services - a generic domain name is okay unless you own a well-know brand], [city], [state - postal abbreviation]" -- up to 65 characters and spaces. The <Description> would be up to 20 words comprising a complete readable sentence which promotes interest in your business, i.e., "We sell quality _____ at a reasonable price, etc." And <keywords> would consist of 12-15 compound plural words separated by commas, i.e., "cars, planes, transportation, etc."

In conclusion, webpages can either be rather straightforward using only HTML text or be crafted totally as a graphic Flash configuration. Either way, care should be taken to complete the Properties entries for Title, Description and Keywords so that there is something that search robots can index. The more one is educated in crafting effective webpages along with metatag placement, the less will be spent to hire third-party consultants to assist you in this matter.

To demonstrate how search engines/directories work, go to Yahoo.com and type in the following search query: "pizza downtown los angeles." [Note: do not include the quotes (").] Again, this is a very generic query which means you want to order a "pizza" from "downtown" and in what city -- "Los Angeles." Sounds fairly simple and then hit Enter. In a moment or two, there will appear some 1.3 million search results and among the top Five rankings will be a business called "Pizza Next Door, etc." The significance of this demonstration is to illustrate that most Interest shoppers will discover "Pizza Next Door," forthright because of its high web presence and ranking within the Top Five. So these shoppers are more or less likely to patronize this pizza establishment and hopefully in the long term; validate the owner and his family as having a profitable Internet enterprise.

Good luck!

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