It is important that you choose the SEO agency that you want to hire carefully. The last thing that you want to do is hire an SEO agency that uses black hat SEO because search engines will know if black hat SEO is being used and will penalise your website or even remove your website from their search engine results.
How To Spot The Difference Between White Hat And Black Hat SEO?
1. Meta Tags
- Black hat SEO stuffs Meta tags with keywords that are most commonly searched for even if they do not relate to the content of your website.
- White hat SEO researches keywords that relate to your website and that are commonly searched for but, unlike black hat SEO, white hat does not force in as many keywords as possible.
2. Content
- Black hat SEO will hide content from the customer such as bad reviews. This can be through putting the content on the website but making it so the text is white and on a white background so it can’t be read.
- White hat SEO produces good quality content that has keywords placed naturally in the text. Search engines prefer content that is written to a high standard; if it is not your website will move down in search results listings.
3. Linking
- Black hat SEO will include as many links to and from your website as possible, even if they are not related to your website. This is called link farming and will be penalised by Google, and other major search engines, if your website is found to be doing it.
- White hat SEO produces content to a high standard that similar websites want to link with. Although this will not give you hundreds of links like with link farming, it will give your website links of good quality that are relevant to your site.
4. Page Elements
- Black hat SEO will use doorway pages. These are pages that are of poor quality that are filled with keywords or phrases that are commonly searched for. If these doorway pages are clicked on they will funnel users to a single destination, which is not the one they selected. Google will take action against websites that use doorway pages.
- White hat SEO directs the user to the page they selected and gives them good content with SEO-friendly headings.
How Can You Find Out If An SEO Agency Uses Black Hat SEO?
It is important to talk to the SEO agency that you want to hire and ask them what sort of techniques they will use and then go away and research these techniques to make sure they are white hat SEO.
You can be assured that, at SEO Junkies, we only use the most up to date methodologies and practices that are all above board. To begin planning your white SEO campaign with a reputable SEO agency, and to see the results you deserve, talk to a member of our team today.