Picture by PubCon through CrunchBase Search engine optimization companies that use so-called black hat strategies – such practices as paid links that can get one banned from Google’s search rankings – hardly advertise themselves as black hat SEOs. And even legitimate, or white hat SEO companies are loathe to reveal too much of their secret sauce – that is, after all how they make their profits – which makes sense from a business standpoint but in practical terms makes it difficult to distinguish the good guys from the bad.
Thus Joe Silverman,
Microsoft Office 2007 Professional, CEO of New York Computer Help, an IT outsourced service company,
Office Professional 2007, found himself several years ago embroiled with a black hat SEO firm that, unbeknownst to him, exchanged links with non-related websites. “There were sports and apparel company websites that had our website link on it, boosting our ranking in a non-Google policy-like fashion,
Microsoft Office 2007 Pro,” he tells Selling It. “At the time, we had no clue what the black hat SEO company was doing until one day, our ranking dropped significantly.” Silverman then hired an SEO company that used white hat ways to untangle the unrelated links and the subsequent damage it caused. The process, he says, took years.
If this story – or at least parts of it — sound familiar, that is because it was splashed across the New York Times this weekend. J.C. Penney, the Times reported, had its search results bolstered significantly over the past few months through the use of such tactics. The retailer denied any knowledge of the paid links and promptly fired its SEO firm.
There has been plenty of finger pointing, both at J.C. Penney and Google, which has not come out in full warrior mode against the store even though it seemingly violated its most basic rules of the road.
Silverman, for one, is sympathetic. “It can happen, easily,
Office Home And Business 2010 Key, even today,” he says, even though his own unwitting brush with a black hat firm happened in 2000. “I think there are more of them out there than we realize – and they can be very hard to spot because they make general promises – such as, they will get your results to the top of the page within six months – that could also be made by legitimate firms.”
To find the best SEO company – or least one that won’t get you on Google’s bad side – Silverman suggests the following. Start with a search on Google for SEO companies and pick the top five or seven or ten – however many you wish to vet. “It makes sense that the best SEO companies will have been able to get their names at the top of the page and I think this is one category that Google watches more closely than others.”
Get customer references – and make sure they go back more than one year, preferably five years. “It is easy for a black hat firm to keep a customer happy for six months or a year. But only a white hat SEO consultant can keep someone who has been satisfied for five years – by then the client will have realized if something shady had been going on.”
Talk to Google. They really are there to help, Silverman says. “Matt Cutts, the Google spam cop,
Microsoft Office 2010, has been on the hot seat regarding the JC Penney black hat issue. He is actually as kind and considerate as he came across in the New York Times article. I know firsthand since he was extremely helpful in giving me positive advice to get my website Google-compliant when it was flagged. Yes, Matt and his team are diligent in penalizing black hat sites, but they are very helpful in giving tips to the innocent owners who are trying to do right by Google.”
Microsoft Office 2007 Professional One CEO’s Expe
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