LazrWeb Recommended Reading on Domain Name Renewals and SEO Scams.

Some new and alarming scams have surfaced over the past few months, which are brazen in their tactics, and would cause you great harm and monetary loss if you fell for them.

LazrWeb wants to educate and hopefully prevent any person or enity from getting involved with these scams that sound good, but actually do nothing more than separate you from your hard earned money and take ownership of your domain name.

There are two scams we want to deal with.

1. Domain name scams.
2. SEO scams.

Domain name scams.

You receive an official looking letter in the mail or FAX, that looks like an legitimate invoice explaining that you domain is "expiring soon", and you must "act now" to renew it or risk losing it forever.

There are several "companies" that promote this type of scam.

• Domain Registry of America
• EU Registry Services
• Siteleader.com
• Many others

There are several variants of the company names and services that they offer. Without getting into all the details - these are all scams.
If you read the very, very small print at the bottom or back page of the "invoice" you will discover that you are transferring your domain name to them (they will now "own" your domain name, not you.) and they will charge you an inflated price for "renewing" your domain name and stealing it.

If you receive any notice to "renew" your expiring domain name, please contact LazrWeb immediately about it, or simply throw out the FAX or mail.

Further info from Federal Trade Commission:
www.ftc.gov/bcp/conline/pubs/alerts/domainalrt.shtm

Another good source about online scams:
http://www.ucan.org/blog/blog/scam_alert/domain_registry_of_america_scam

This is the newest and by far the most damaging scam to come about in the last few years. You receive a phone call or email detailing the sorry state of your website ranking in the search engines, or something to that effect. SEO or search engine optimization is a unique and highly prized skill. Any individual or company can call themselves an SEO specialist or expert. This is a new cottage industry without standards or certifications. To gain SEO skills, one has to be involved in IT (information technology) and understand the language of IT on an advanced level. They count on the fact that you, the site owner does not know the language or methods involved in SEO. That is their advantage. They will talk about "first page results" or "number one position" for your key words.

Bottom line - no one, not even LazrWeb, can either imply or infer to you that you can get "better results", "first page placement" or "top 10 results" in the search engines, because it is not true to say that. It is up to the search engines to give a website a "top" position, not an SEO firm. There are literally thousands of considerations to employ to gain decent placement in search engines. LazrWeb seriously doubts the acumen/skill of any firm or company that suggests these types of results. SEO is a very serious business, intensive and involved.

We have personally seen several LazrWeb clients with good ranking - get involved with these scammers, and their websites are now completely absent from all the search engines. We had to provision them another domain name and website altogether to get them back on.

Why? Because they got involved with an alleged SEO firm that made promises that they never intended to keep. Simply put - a full fledged scam. These companies know nothing of the hard work involved to do SEO properly. They simply make promises, take your money, and run, or worse, utilize "black-hat" techniques to induce temporary results to string you along - which will get your site banned from search engines. This happens all the time.
They do not care, they have your money.

We know of no reputable SEO firm that has to advertize or send out blanket spam emails, we do not have to. Customers find us.

LazrWeb charges a considerable amount for SEO consultation ($2,000.00 minimum) and fees for on-going SEO that amounts to thousands of dollars monthly for the services that your site enjoys already.

SEO Facts:

• SEO from a reputable firm costs serious money.
• SEO is an extreamly laborious process, cost intensive and time intensive process.
• SEO cannot and does not "guaranty" any results in search engines.
• SEO is not a magic wand, and cannot magically move you up in rank.
• SEO is a highly professional technical skill, involving many different facets.

Any email or telephone call from an SEO expert or SEO firm that guarantees any results - is a scam. Results cannot be guaranteed. Search engines control results, not SEO firms.

So carefully consider these offers - they are scams from top to bottom.

LazrWeb - Where you get more!!