The world of SEO has the unique phenomena of \u2018white\u2019 and \u2018black\u2019 (good and evil) techniques. You won\u2019t find this in advertising, content marketing or social media marketing. That is because the end product of ads, content and social media is very overt, and plainly seen. It is an article or a video or infographic. However, nobody really \u2018sees\u2019 SEO work. It\u2019s behind the scenes, obfuscated. This is because Search Engine algorithms are based on hundreds of factors which may be unseen to the individual.<\/p>\n
It is this \u2018unseen\u2019 aspect that swindlers and unscrupulous SEO companies can exploit in their clients. The only thing the client can see is the search engine result page\u2019s results. And if its good then the client is happy. However, he will be totally oblivious to how the black-hat SEO got him those results.<\/p>\n
How to detect black-hat SEO companies<\/strong><\/p>\n 1)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 They guarantee search engine results; something which nobody could ethically promise: \u201cwe will get you to rank #1\u201d. A real SEO company could guarantee an increase in position but could not guarantee they could reach #1.<\/p>\n 2)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Using link-schemes, networks, farms as part of their \u201cSEO Strategy\u201d. Google can detect these and while it may give some boost in the search result pages, it won\u2019t last forever and your site can get penalized.<\/p>\n 3)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u2018Secret SEO formula\u2019 which they cannot tell you. It is most certainly black-hat if they won\u2019t tell you what they do. Real, white-hat SEO is common knowledge and can be found anywhere on the web, including Google\u2019s Webmaster Central.<\/p>\n 4)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 They may encourage purchasing high domain authority links<\/p>\n 5)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 They may encourage purchasing FB likes, TW followers and Youtube views<\/p>\n 6)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Uses automated content creation tools. The articles are basically spam and are composed of content from other websites. Looks un-natural and has too many keywords.<\/p>\n 7)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 They guarantee search engine results in a particular period of time. Like: \u201cWe can get you to number one in 3 weeks!\u201d This is a glaring red flag, and one should never bother to speak with them again. Real SEO takes a considerable amount of time.<\/p>\n 8)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Use invisible or hidden text.<\/p>\n 9)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Use duplicate content as \u2018filler\u2019 for pages.<\/p>\n 10)\u00a0\u00a0 Stuffs keywords in: title tags, image alt attributes.<\/p>\n There are more but the above are just some of the things you should look out for.<\/p>\n