Ok, your website looks great but does not rank well on Google. You need help and you have done some research Search Engine Optimization is what you need. However, you keep hearing about white hat and black hat SEO and you start to wonder, how do you choose an ethical search engine optimization company? Ethical search engine optimization is the practice of using Google-sanctioned practices to optimize your website so it is more relevant and more authoritative than another website for your topic. There are several ethical and non-ethical ways to do this and non-ethical practices will eventually get you penalized.
Relevancy: Having your website more closely match a topic using keywords and phrases for that topic than other websites. Such as this post being highly relevant for ethical search engine optimization.
Authority: By having other authoritative pages link to your page, you become more authoritative. The more authoritative your site is, the more trusted it is and is more likely to rank higher.
Anchor Text: The clickable text on a page that links you to another page.
What determines ethical search engine optimization? Following Google’s webmaster guide and Google’s SEO guide is the best way to educate yourself on what Google expects. Then use that knowledge to compare that against search engine optimization companies to determine if they are ethical or not.
Other tips for finding ethical search engine optimization companies would consist of common sense practices you would use to find any consultant-based service.
- Ask for referrals.
- Look at other work they have done. Looking to see if the site(s) are human-readable and not simply stuffing keywords into the pages.
- Search the company’s name on Google and see if there is any bad press. Also, try to take note of any other sites that mention this company or blogs that the company has participated in.
- Do a search using site:www.seosudo.com and see if Google lists pages from that site. If not, it might be banned by Google.
- Look at their Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter accounts and see what this company is saying and what others are saying about it.
- If at any point you get an uneasy feeling, then move to the next SEO consultant and research them.