Steering Clear of the Black Hats

Depictions of the Old West have the white-hatted hero and the black-hatted villain. In the field of search engine optimization (SEO), black-hat practices take a whole new meaning with efforts to help sites gain high rankings but at the cost of penalization. 

Here are some signs your SEO contractor isn’t one of the good guys:

They don’t involve you

If your SEO agency is doing it right, it should be asking you for the necessary data and account access such as your social accounts, target keywords, Google Webmaster tools, analytics, past audits, work and penalties, etc. If they ask you none of these, chances are they’re just adding backlinks from their immense collection of spam-filled sites, which is a very risky action.

They don’t have deliverables

 

SEO often takes months before it shows results, so don’t panic. However, your SEO agency must update you with the progress of their work. Ask for deliverables such as optimized content, an SEO audit of your site, and articles with backlinks of your site that are being published in legit sites.

There are dubious backlinks in your link profile

 

The number of backlinks you have is an indication of your site’s reputation or importance, but quality precedes quantity. If your site is filled with random and questionable backlinks from sites that lack credibility, you’re likely to get penalized.  Ask your SEO agency where those sites came from. Whether it comes clean or not, you have to get rid of those links.