I received a call this week from yet another SEO company eager to optimize my website to get high search engine rankings and more web traffic. As an SEO myself, I’m always interested in what they have to say.

Typically, the sales rep never has my website in front of him — I don’t get how a sales person can phone a prospect regarding her website and not even bother to pull it up on a screen before calling.

I listened patiently as he tried to explain search engine optimization (SEO). He was actually very personable …  but didn’t know what he was talking about.

He gave me particular keywords to type into my Google search box and gosh-oh-golly his company was at the top of the search engine results!

This was supposedly a big deal because there were 129,000,000 results for that search, and that supposedly showed how many people were trying to rank for that term.

If someone calls you and tells you that, please, don’t fall for it. All that figure shows are which pages Google has determined are relevant for the search.

I quickly looked up the term he had me type in the search box and sure enough hardly anyone ever types in that term. I tried to get him to also look up the information I found, but … gosh-oh-golly he didn’t even have a computer in front of him!  

Of course, he didn’t get it when I tried to explain: It doesn’t matter how many results Google shows for a given term, what matters is how many people are using that term in actual searches.

In fact, he didn’t have a clue. He kept going back to the 129 million number, saying that all those people were trying to rank for the indicated term. It was really silly.

Please, be careful out there!

Easy Web Tip #64: When someone calls to sell you SEO services to get your website high rankings, don’t be impressed just because the rep has you type in a term that results in a single high search engine ranking.