Hi

I wonder if anyone might be able to help and throw a little light on this for me. A search engine optimisation company has been 'dogging' me for a while now - I am reluctant but have not completely said 'no'.

Basically they offer a hundred extra pages and 50 non-reciprocal links to help boost page rank and optimise for various keywords. I have checked some sites that have had this optimisation completed and basically they have a site map of a hundred pages which all seem virtually identical except for the keyword. They are hard to find from within the site - but are there. However they supposedly rank highly for their keyword and so draw traffic in.

My worries:

are these doorway pages? apparently not because you can get to them from within the site.

Is this ethical optimisation - I wonder whether it is because the content on the pages is not really useful or interesting to the customer it simply draws them in by ranking highly.

Could these extra 100 pages trigger a mirror content spam penalty as really the only thing differentiating them is the keywords.

Could these changes adversely affect our current rankings.

I have worked on the site and we rank well on some of our specific keywords many top positions. However the general keywords which pick up the most traffic we do not rank well on and I would like to.

Does anyone know anything about this style of optimisation. Is it ethical? worth the money? Any advice gratefully received.

Thanks

BabyBeans

You want to make sure you find a legitimate SEO company. There are a lot of scams out there. I would try the following. Find the top keywords associated with "SEO" and search for them on Google. The top SEO companies should be listed (this shows they can infact optimize a site). Then I would search for the companies by name/url to see if there are any forums or sites with possible company complaints and/or praises. Narrow the choices, then take a look at the sites. Then you have to ask yourself:

1. Is the site(s) just a one page sales pitch? - If so, ignore them

2. Is the site(s) professional looking?

3. What do they "promise" and does it even seem possible?

4. Assuming they can do what they promise, is the cost worth it?

5. Do they list and/or can you get reference URL's so you can contact them about their experience?

The most important thing is to follow your instincts. For example you wrote above

A search engine optimisation company has been 'dogging' me for a while now - I am reluctant but have not completely said 'no'.

If they have to chase clients then they are not very professional. I sounds like spam to me. You also said you are "reluctant". That instict I would trust. Good luck.

This type of "optimisation" is dubbed "mad lib spam" by Matt Cutts from Google.

And I agree, Trust your instinct and leave them well alone.
Any time you start creating pages simply for SEs you will be making a wrong decision.

Just create real pages of content for the phrases, It's less stressful because you won't be waking up every morning wondering if your site/pages have been pulled out.