Does your business wear a white hat or a black hat? Not completely sure? What the heck does this even mean?

And no…don’t worry about committing some sort of fashion faux pas.

White and black hat are referring to the practices your marketing department takes part in in regards to search engine optimization. Many of you might be wondering why that matters, white and black are not referring to inbound marketing or outbound marketing, it is referring to the quality and honestly of the marketing your company practices.

White hat marketing is the implementation of good techniques that search engines consider good practices by following the appropriate guidelines, rules and policies of Google, Bing and Yahoo. Techniques employed through white hat SEO are guest blogging, link baiting, quality content, internal linking and site optimization. What makes these techniques more accepted by search engines? These results create lasting results that create a better user experience on your website.

These practices can take a long time to pay off and put your company towards the top of Google’s search results, however as a long term strategy it can help your company generate more leads and not classify your site as spam.

Interested in learning more about how to stay in line with white hat SEO techniques? Contact IMPACT and learn how we can help!

Why Black Hat SEO is a Business Killer

By spam, we are not referring to Hawaii’s most consumed pre-cooked ham in a can, but rather internet spam. With all of Google’s recent algorithm updates Panda and Penguin, hundreds of company websites were considered spam, causing them to drop rankings in Google’s search results. Search engines today are crawling company websites looking for companies utilizing black hat SEO techniques.

Black hat SEO is the practice of using techniques that search engines do not approve of. Companies using this strategy are implementing techniques that are not considered good practices by the search engines, something that Google and Bing are trying to minimize. A company using black hat SEO utilizes hidden text, link farms, keyword stuffing, blog spam, scraping, paid links, doorway pages, parasite hosting and cloaking. All of those techniques can be hurting your business.

Black Hat SEO Techniques

Hidden Text is content on your site that your vistors cannot see. It is usually in the context of keywords that are included into the text of your websites pages. When you load a page with a ton of keywords, not only is it unbearable for your visitors to read but, search engines can still spot those keywords which can actually cause you to drop in search rankings.

Hidden text is similar to keyword stuffing, as you are adding so many keywords into your content in the hope that it will help you rank higher. It is actually hurting your company, search engines look for sites that create a great user experiences on their site. If you are a marketer think about going to a companies website and reading their about page, when you are on that page you want to know who the company is, what they do, how long have they been in business.

You want to learn about the company. If you were looking for a waste management company, you want to know what services they provided and who they were. While reading their about page you see keywords like recycling in CT, single stream recycling in CT, dumpster rentals in CT, waste management in CT, commercial garbage collection in CT, residential trash removal in CT and Connecticut waste management, just to name a few.

After reading that page, you would get the point that they are located in Connecticut, but did you really gain any valuable information from their website? You would probably wonder how that company is still in business. You can also probably guess that they do not rank very well in search results. So why do so many marketers use it. Creating great content that allows your visitors to understand what you do will create a better experience and help you rank better in Google.

Blog spam is also something that you see all the time, what better way to get your blog or product out there than by adding your companies link in a blogs comment section? A great way would be to actually create content that brings visitors to your site, this is something that inbound marketers will emphasize over and over. You want to gain the interest of your visitors and leads, by pushing your products and service on to consumers, you are actually pushing them away.

How many times have you been reading a companies blog and in their comments you find someone promoting another companies blog. I don’t know about you but it makes me wonder, isn’t there something else they could be spending their time on? As an inbound marketing company, everyone at IMPACT could probably think of a couple things like creating calls-to-action, landing pages, engaging on social media, writing blog posts, a keyword analysis and infographics that those companies using black hat SEO could implement.

Ranking High in Search Engines

What company doesn’t want to be number one?

Every company wants to be on the first page of Google’s search results. Just because black hat SEO can quickly get your website in that number one stop, it will not last very long. To be number one think about how your website appears to visitors and search engines.

Use appropriate techniques that bring visitors to your site, ones that won’t make Google think your website is spam. No website wants to be marked as spam! Think of Google as a customer, not only will it keep you website high in Google’s rankings but it can keep you from missing a sales ready opportunity.

Looking to rank higher in search engines? Contact IMPACT and learn how we can help!