One of the unique aspects of SEO is that exact metrics, numbers, quantities of its various factors (such as keyword density, link weight, site age, navigation balance, etc) are not only unknown but are closely guarded secrets. Therefore it leaves SEO’s to only speculate. Some speculation is based on precision A/B testing and some purely guess work. It is hard to know what and who to believe. This problem is compounded by the fact that there exist many unscrupulous individuals and companies who take advantage of this ignorance by selling black-hat services or by simply scamming.
But wait, all is not hopeless! To help alleviate this quandary Google wrote the Webmaster Quality Guidelines, and although it does not tell one exactly what quantity of what to achieve the best rank, it does clearly delineate what not to do, and illustrates generally what one should do.
Why Google?
Since one is trying to get his website to rank in Google then it is natural that one would listen to their terms, conditions and guidelines. Some naysayers may assert that one should not even trust Google’s guidelines, and that it is a trap. However this assumption evaporates once one actually reads the Webmaster Guidelines and discovers how logical they are. Let’s look over some of the key points.
Quality guidelines
- Automatically generated content
- Participating in link schemes
- Creating pages with little or no original content
- Cloaking
- Sneaky redirects
- Hidden text or links
- Doorway pages
- Scraped content
- Participating in affiliate programs without adding sufficient value
- Loading pages with irrelevant keywords
- Creating pages with malicious behavior, such as phishing or installing viruses, trojans, or other badware
- Abusing rich snippets markup
- Sending automated queries to Google
The above consist of only the quality guidelines, there are additionally guidelines for technical aspects, design and content.
Conclusion
Before you hand over your site to an SEO firm, look over other sites they have done and determine if they are using any of the above black hat SEO techniques. But if your website was made by Clear Imaging you have nothing to fear, we only use white hat SEO.
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