As an internet marketing firm with a foothold in search engine optimization we still see lot of businesses getting sucked into bad practices from other SEO firms. One of the most popular strategies to get clients is to offer a link building service. This is the practice of going to other websites and creating links to your website. Google ranks your site based on how many links are coming to your site as a major factor in their algorithm so it makes your site rank better.
Sounds harmless...right? Well no. This is not a recommended practice by Google stated in their terms of service. The reason is, Google doesn’t want anyone artificially manipulating search engine rankings. So if you do hire an SEO to do this work you might get great results for a while but then if caught you will get penalized.
SEO Agency link building (one reason to get fired)
A Google penalty basically removes your site from their index and you won’t show up in search results. Imagine, being a plumber in your town, and all of a sudden you can’t be found online. Sounds terrible right? It can be devastating.
So why do SEO companies’s still do this?
Because it still works and the client doesn’t understand the risks. To confuse even more people there are legitimate ways to do link building. However, the majority are tempted by the easy shortcuts and fall into the black hat category. If you are monitoring your backlinks you can prevent spammy backlinks.
So what if this happens to your website?
Recovering from a Google penalty is a very long process that requires more work than link building usually costs. The truth is you may never fully recover as we’ve seen in some cases. We’ve even seen some give up and start over with a new domain.
So how do you do SEO?
We don’t employ any tactics considered “black hat” and never have. Our approach has been to follow Google guidelines and produce great content that gets shared over social media. Content that answers our buyer personas questions online is how we get links and traffic to your website.
Make sure you optimize!
We create blog posts that are optimized for one topic or keyword. We broadcast our posts through social channels for engagement and sharing. This brings visitors to the website which in turn creates opportunities to convert to a lead. We convert those leads via some form for an offer or something of value. We then nurture those leads to be closed as customers.
This process takes longer and is more work in the beginning but is much more effective in the long run. By building content over time you are giving search engines what they are looking for. We don’t try to fool anyone including Google. Sound logical?
It’s actually a little more complicated than that but you get the idea. Trying to fool Google is simply dumb and will only work for a while until Google puts in place something that will cause your site to get penalized.
We offer a complete internet marketing analysis for your website absolutely free. Why not give it a try?