The worst thing you can do when starting a new eCommerce business is to play dirty SEO tricks (AKA black hat techniques) with Google to grab those preeminent top spots. If you choose to do so, then you will never be found on Google again.
This has been demonstrated many times but one of the most noteworthy cases was that of an SEO scam that was published in NY Times in February 2011.
In case you missed this particular article, here is a small excerpt
The retail giant JCPenney was identified for implementing black hat SEO techniques that ideally dominated the top spots for most of the umbrella phrases like dresses, bedding, area rugs, and more. So, how did they make their way to the top? The company was getting its SEO done through a third-party vendor who allegedly topped the Google results by getting backlinks from websites which were irrelevant to JCPenney or any of its pages. Though JCPenney said that they did not authorize this campaign as this is against their natural search policies, at the end of the day it was they (JCPenney) who had to suffer.
For the full article click here.
If you want to get your site on the top spots on Google your site should have:
- Good site architecture – Crawler friendly site for easy crawling and indexing
- Appropriate content – Information rich and relevant content strengthened by words users type to find sites/pages-
- Quality backlinks – A link from a site is considered as a vote for a linked site. Typically, it needs to be relevant as well as trustworthy.
These methods are apparent white hat practices and an ethical way of managing SEO, and while it takes time to yield result, it does provide a platform for long term growth rather than a short lived burst of false popularity. Black hat methods incorporate paid links, page cloaking, keyword spamming, doorway pages, content spamming, hidden text, etc. These techniques are unsanctioned and are seen as dirty tricks which essentially spam the search result and breach the search engine protocol.
Google stay very involved in monitoring their search engine results because they want to show the most relevant sites/pages when their users use their service as a result of this they reward the best campaigns with the highest spots. They will never allocate a high spot to a site if it is found to be employing questionable SEO techniques that have ruined their search result.
If you, or your SEO vendor are using any of the black hat techniques that are laid out above, then be aware that you could easily be the next victim of Google.
How do you identify black hat SEO techniques?
- Check your SEO vendor’s monthly SEO activities/strategies. Do not get fobbed off by SEO companies that resolve to get you on top in short time, give you X no. of backlinks for X£, etc. Do not fall for SEO scams and false promises.
- Check your website’s backlink profile.
- Check if your site has been loaded with hidden content.
- Check if a page has been created largely for targeting a specific search phrase.
- Check if a page is getting redirected.
- Check for an unreasonable amount of link exchanging from irrelevant sites.
The most important thing to remember for your SEO is that Google and the other search engines want the best sites to be shown to their users. Become an authority on your subject, make sure your site has plenty of relevant informative content that’s updated on a regular basis. As for links, only link with sites that are relevant and well reputed.
I 100% agree with this article. White hat techniques all the way – I think people see the easy wins and go for them, but in reality those easy wins can (and will) lead to months and months of hard work to re-gain favour with google.
The most simple rule to follow in terms of SEO is – Everything should be user friendly – Every time you do something on the site, you should ask yourself: will this be user friendly? if the answer is no, then don’t do it – Google wants the web to be a user friendly experience. Pages can easily be set up to be user friendly and for google bots – Content is king!
Definitely, stay away from Black Hat Seo and all the agencies offering guaranteed number one spot or 100% refund, that’s another red flag you should be ware of.
nice info given , we like it
I agree with Eliseo V comment on staying away from SEO agencies offering number one spot or 100% refund.
Time after time I have seen a SEO company say how amazing they are and were number one for this term etc, and there not even close.
For SEO to work for your company, it takes hard work and commitment! don’t be conned!
I completely agree guys, any external SEO agency you work with shouldn’t be promising outstanding results via “secret techy methods”.
They should simply be an extension of your marketing team, with all the commitment and transparency you’d expect from your in house staff.
“Do not get fobbed off by SEO companies that resolve to get you on top in short time, give you X no. of backlinks for X£, etc.”
I see both sides of this argument. On one hand, no, it’s not good to promise x amount of backlinks for a certain amount, but I know many SEOs who find valuable backlink opportunities ahead of time, so they have a general idea as to quantity. And I know: quality over quantity.
What about directories? Is that considered a black hat technique? I know Google recently did changes for these content and link farms, but I wonder if still there are some out there that are credible like dmoz.
All the other things you mention make sense. I would summarize this that if the technique is easy to do and takes a few seconds it probably classifies as black hat. But if you got to work hard (to build the content or create the relationship and earn the back link) then it’s white hat.
Most of the free directories provide low quality backlinks that can actually be damaging to your SEO efforts. Paid directories tend to be better as they aren’t spammed so much.
We stumbled over here coming from a different web page and thought I may as well check things out.
I like what I see so i am just following you.
Look forward to going over your web page for a second time.
Really well said. black hat practices not only should be known and avoided but also should be identified.thanks for this vital information on how to identify the black hat seo practices if any website is using them.