The Ugly of SEO

Inspired by The Pod Cast in My Pants, we are going to take a look at good vs bad SEO.  We'll start with bad. Now the crew with Pod Cast in My Pants had a pretty slimy view of SEO because of the bad.  So I'll break down what bad SEO entails.

Promises, Promises

One red flag is a person/agency who makes a lot of promises and guarantees. Avoid anything similar to the following:

• Get guaranteed results 
• Guaranteed number 1 listing on Google
• Guaranteed conversions

Guaranteed

Stay away from the word "guaranteed." Nothing in online marketing is guaranteed. SEO is dictated by variables.

Variable 1: Google's algorithm which changes often. Have you heard of the Penguin and Panda? Those are updates Google releases every now and then to keep search relevant for the user and to prevent bad SEO.

Variable 2: The consumer. You can't control how a consumer reacts to your listing. You can only hope that they like what they see and click on your link and then convert on your website. You can't make them do that. You can encourage it with good SEO, but the consumer has ultimate control over their behavior.

Variable 3: Cycles. Some industries (retail, sporting goods, education, etc) have cycles where traffic is higher during different periods. You may see a flux that repeats itself yearly. You are at the mercy of these cycles.

Variable 4: Keyword difficulty and competition plays a huge factor in how fast a website will rank for a keyword. The more competitive and difficult the keyword, the longer and more work will be required in order to see results. 

So nothing is guaranteed. If someone tells you otherwise, they're probably using black hat practices. The truth is that SEO can take an average of three to six months to see results, and even then those results vary.

Black hat is bad. White hat is good.

Good and bad, good and evil.  It's a simple premise to understand. Black hat SEO are practices that try and cheat Google and search engines. 

Common black hat practices:

• Keyword cloaking (making keywords invisible on a webpage using the same color as the background)
• Keyword stuffing
• Buying visitors, socia media followers, etc
• Buying links to boost backlinks. This is fairly new. It used to be common practice, but not so much anymore. 

Price

When I first started working way back when, one of the first warning signs I saw was price. SEO companies who promised results for simply $20k seemed suspicious to me. SEO isn't cheap, but it shouldn't bankrupt you either. Stay away from pricey packages. Realistically, good SEO will cost you a minimum of $1k and no more than $10k per month depending on how much work you have done. I will tell you that any SEO strategy I develop will cost between $1k and $2k per month.

There you have it. The reason why so many people probably have a negative perception of SEO. By the way, Google is well aware of black hat SEO and punishes websites who use those tactics. They're always on the lookout for those who try and "cheat the system." We'll focus on good SEO next. If you have any questions, feel free to comment below or send me an email.