Are you tired of not being ranked number one on Google, Bing, and Yahoo? Do you toss and turn in the middle of the night wishing there was an easy, low cost way to get guaranteed SEO results when it comes to your SERP (search engine results page)? What if I were to tell you that for just 3 easy payments of $19.95 (plus shipping and handling) we could put your website on top of your competition, crushing them like grapes between your toes at a winery! All those interested, can I get a “Woot- Woot”?
While this offer may seem a little far-fetched, it’s exactly what a large number of BlackHat SEO companies are trying to sell to you. (But without the Infomercial Theme.) Companies that advertise guaranteed SEO results and don’t have a content strategy to back it up are essentially selling you snake oil in the form of negative SEO. Due to the fact that no SEO company knows the exact algorithm formulated by search engines to find results, it’s impossible to guarantee. Google even says that you can’t “guarantee” search results on their own site right here.
Here are a few examples of…
BlackHat SEO
- Keyword stuffing: Loading keywords repeatedly into tags and descriptions as well as on page in an effort to manipulate search engines to rank higher.
- Hidden text: Hidden text is where you place text behind images, backgrounds, or simply setting the font size to 0.
- Hidden links: Hiding links from the user by only selecting a small selection of a word such a hyphen.
- Link farms: A group of websites that all hyperlink to every other site in the group.
WhiteHat SEO
- Quality Content: Placing great content on your site that will benefit the end user.
- Effective Keyword Research: Creating a list of keywords using a keyword search tool that have a high search volume with low difficulty.
- Proper Titles and Meta Data: Creating unique page titles and meta data that are both the right length and relevant to your business
- Quality Links: Having quality websites with high page rank authority linking to your website.
- Proper Social Distribution: Distributing your great content through social channels without being spammy.
SEO has changed a lot over the past 15 years and you want to make sure you are doing business with a company that is not stuck in 1992. Overall, the UX (User Experience) is becoming the most important factor in SEO. Matt Cutts, head of the webspam team at Google, and his team are constantly at work to make the end user a better experience.
I recently had the privilege (I’m making this up) to sit down with Matt Cutts (Not really) to ask him a few personal questions. (This did not actually happen.)
Me: Matt, what is your definition of a good blog?
Matt: Great Content!
Me: What is your favorite Color?
Matt: Great Content!
Me: What is your favorite food?
Matt: Great Content!
Me: Ok, well what is your favorite song?
Matt: Great Content!
Me: What are your cats’ names?
Matt: Emmy and Ozzy
Me: Ok, that’s weird
As you can see, besides the names of his cats, Great Content is Matt Cutts favorite thing. Creating great content for the best user experience possible is the direction everyone should be heading.
Be wary of firms that offer guaranteed SEO results without providing you the step ladder of how they are going to do it. I’m certainly not saying that all guarantees are bad in the SEO world but there have been enough bad apples that will make you want to ask questions before signing up.