The Truth About SEO

If your search engine optimization (SEO) company is using smoke and mirrors then you are being overcharged. In other words — you should take your business elsewhere. The truth is that SEO is NOT mysterious. It takes a lot of work to do it well and here is where it starts.

First, in the website itself from the textual content and coding which includes (partial list):

1. Titles
2. Well written copy geared towards people while using keywords and keyword phrases conservatively.
3. File names (URLs of each page)
4. Website Structure (order of pages and subpages)
5. File names of elements on the website (images, pdfs, video, etc.)
6. Internal Links
7. Title Tags (code)
8. Descriptions (code)
9. Meta Tags (code)
10. Headings (code)
11. Alt Tags (code)

Second, in follow up work which includes:

1. Editing Copy
2. Writing New Copy (pages and blog posts)
3. Creating legitimate content on other websites from social media to forums

White Hat SEO vs. Black Hat SEO – why keep to the straight and narrow

White hat SEO is the way to go for many reasons.

• It is more effective
• It is ethical and above board
• It is cheaper
• You know what you are paying for

In February and March 2011 Google updated its algorithm to weed out websites from search engine results which feature low quality content. Examples of this are websites that are stuffed with keywords even if there is no related content on the website, duplicate content, or stuffed with links. This is great news because real websites will move up in the ranking. If you had a legitimate website and white hat SEO optimization like this one you probably were doing ok to begin with. Now you’ll do even better.

Signs your SEO company is using black hat techniques:

1. They don’t have access to  your website backend (in other words they can’t edit your website).
   Why is this a problem? Because the very first thing you should do is optimize the site itself. These things are highest in priority and have the most impact on your SEO performance.
2. They say they can provide immediate results.
   Why is this a problem? This is simply not true for real search engine optimization. Real optimization takes time to prove, you will see gradual improvement which will last longer because Google is always looking for ways to favor legitimate websites which use legitimate techniques and who have inbound links from legitimate websites.
3. They are using software to do the work.
   Why is this a problem? Software is great for analysis of your websites and competition. Where software should not be used is for spinning articles (stealing content), bogus link building and many other nasty tricks.
4. Stuffing Keywords – self explanatory, most commonly done using invisible text.
5. They are charging exorbitant fees.
6. They can’t tell you what they really did for you month after month – self explanatory.
7. They are only using Google AdWords. Actually, there is absolutely nothing wrong with using Google Adwords but, that is advertising, and it can help your website by increasing visibility of your brand but it should be only part of the tools your SEO provider is using.