I have been working online since 1999. I got started by doing public speaking on how to not get “scammed” online.
I have a special loathing for online scammers.
Online anyone can say they are an “expert”, they can make all kinds of claims of what they have done, and what they earn, and how do you know the difference?

I am going to give you a few tips and tools you can use to find out if the person you are considering hiring to help you is for real.
Recently I have had several clients who paid for SEO services from so called “experts” and they got burned.
If they had just done a little checking first, this would not have happened.

The first thing to check with any SEO expert or anyone promising you high traffic and instant profits, is to check their websites page ranking.
If they are a ZERO, then you just saved yourself from being scammed. If the site is a zero-3 and they say they are an expert, they obviously are not.

Here is a page rank checker you can bookmark and use.
http://www.prchecker.info/check_page_rank.php

Next find out what other websites they run.
Here you will often discover much interesting information about your potential scammer.
Things like fake testimonials and the same faces and same lies on all their scammy sites.
To find this information out,
All you need to do is go to Yahoo search and enter this:

linkdomain:abc.com -site:abc.com

of course changing the abc.com to whatever persons website you are researching.
This will show you all the domains associated with that persons business and IP, and you will also pull up any comments they left on blogs using that IP, and it really gives you a overview of the person you are considering investing your money with. They may have some things on a different IP, but you will still learn a huge amount about the person by doing this.

Be sure to start clicking on websites that you see listed, and you will soon spot the fakes and the scammers as you will start to see the same sales pitch and the same fake testimonials on various websites. You may see the same website design used over and over for various sites.

As you do this be sure to check the page ranking for some of the sites the so called SEO or Web Expert has worked on, and you will see if they can deliver the goods for you. Especially check out their own domain and page ranking that they have given you as their main business website. Also check their traffic, if it is a ZERO, you know they are scamming.

Don’t forget to Google their name! I suggest when you Google you add the words ,scam, rip off , fake, fraud after their name, why?, because anyone who has complained about them online will pop up for you in the results.
This itself can be a real eye opener.

I learned this the hard way after I bought a scooter online,(X-Treme Scooters) I checked out reviews, I checked out the manufacturer, and I thought I did due diligence, then when the scooter fell apart in the box and the company refused to refund me, I did a new search using the words “scam, fake, rip off and fraud” with the scooter name and there were hundreds of people who got ripped of just like me! I learned my lesson.

Look for the negative words first when checking something out online.
I actually helped other people not get ripped off by writing about this long and horrible scooter story ( it turned into a 4 month battle with the company.)
I wrote about it on eBay guides and a few other places online. Finally my credit card refunded me under the fraud category for this purchase.
Lesson learned.

Taking 30 minutes to do some checking can save you lots of heartache and the loss of your money down the road.

Finally I suggest you download a great tool I use called SEO toolbar. It has all the things built in I have mentioned above and you can just click the various things like page rank, traffic and whois and the yahoo link domain and see it all there.
You can download this tool here
http://tools.seobook.com/seo-toolbar/

Also SEOBOOK is a great blog, packed with very helpful information.

Don’t forget to ask for “proof” from the experts.

Honest people have honest testimonials with people you can actually contact, not made up people or friends that you will see on all thier scammy websites over and over.

Honest people have real websites with real numbers and proof that you can check out for yourself.

These days everyone and their brother has decided to become an “Internet” expert, either Seo or Social Media or something else. Buyer beware, don’t get scammed and taken in by the rip off artists and frauds.

I hope I have stopped some of you from getting burned online.

Please share your stories and leave a comment!

This is going to be an ongoing series. Who could possibly cover this in one post?

When I was thinking about a title for this post, the word blight sprung to mind. I went to the dictionary to make sure I was using it correctly. What do you think?