When starting out you’re often short of money so the last thing you want to do is waste it on marketing services that promise the world but deliver nothing. Here are three web marketing services to avoid:
1. Search Engine Submission Services
How many times do you see this… pay $19.95 and we’ll submit your site to over 150 search engines. Let’s start with these 150+ search engines.
Where exactly are they? Google continues to dominate the search industry, with Yahoo and Live Search lagging behind. At a push you could include Ask in the list of search engines worth targeting. That’s four - the only four that you need to worry about. Many would argue that Google’s the only important search engine these days, even more so in the UK.
Even neglecting the fact that there are only four search engines with any notable usage, why would you need search engine submission services? With one link to your site the search engines will find it. One reciprocal link, one forum posting, or one link on Yahoo Answers.
Don’t waste your time on these search engine submission services. At best you’ll lose your money; at worst your site could be punished for spamming.
2. Redirected Traffic Packages
What are these redirected traffic packages? The companies that provide them claim that they work by redirecting traffic from abandoned domain names to yours. These domain names still receive some traffic which can be redirected to client sites. It’s also targeted traffic as, for example, if you own a travel site you can choose to only receive redirects from travel-related domain names.
How much does it cost for this service? Around $25 for 5,000 unique visitors.
At first glance it looks like a bargain but don’t trust these redirecting services. The sites offering this service are characterised by a lack of contact details, poor site design, and a testimonial or two from ‘Bob’ or ‘Dave’. The best you can hope for is a load of computer bots visiting your site.
3. Traffic Exchanges
Just to get things clear we’re not talking about banner exchanges here. Whilst not setting the world alight these banner exchanges can bring about a little exposure.
Instead we’re talking about traffic exchanges, characterised by 1:1 traffic exchange, manual surfing, 20 seconds or more per visit, a referral programme, and of course a premium paid membership.
Don’t get sucked into using one of these services. They’re full of users sitting in front of their computers clicking ‘next’ every 20 seconds to view another site and build up their credits. There are far more productive ways to spend your time, whether that’s creating great content, building links, or networking and developing relationships.