Many unscrupulous search engine optimization professionals charge their customers thousands of dollars to get them high rankings for "popular" keywords.

They accomplish this by selecting keyword phrases that no one is really searching for. Then they automatically search for these keyword phrases hundreds of times. Then they can show their customer that the keyword phrases are receiving a LOT of searches.

Then, of course, it's easy for these unethical search engine optimization professionals to get top rankings for these keywords because no one else is searching for them anyway.

The end results are that their unsuspecting customers get scammed. The scammed customer will find out in a month or so that he is not getting traffic from these so-called "hot" keywords, but by then the "expert" has his money and is gone.

This scam could cause you problems even if you never hired or paid one of these con artists.

You could find one of these keyword phrases and think it's great because it's getting a lot of searches when in reality it's NOT getting many, if any, REAL searches. Next month it may get almost NO searches when the "expert" collects his fee and quits doing the automated searches for the keyword.

If there are a few thousand searches a month for a keyword or keyword phrase, you are probably safe in assuming it's a good keyword, but be very carefully if there are only a few hundred searches a month for a keyword phrase. The numbers could be the results of someone doing automated searches just to fool a client.

Don't be too paranoid. You can make good money on keywords that only get searched for a few hundred times a month IF they are REAL searches.

Check the number of searches every month for two or three months and you will get a truer picture of how many REAL searches a keyword is getting.

By knowing this technique that is going on in the search engine optimization industry, you are way ahead of the pack.

This is just one of many unethical tricks some search engine optimization professionals use. That's why more and more website owners are deciding to optimize their own websites.

Bottom line: Be very carefully when you hire an "expert" to do your website optimization. Seriously consider learning how to do it yourself or hire only a person who has been recommended to you by someone you know who has actually used their services and had good results.