If there is one service
in the digital marketing industry that stands out on different levels is SEO or
Search Engine Optimization. Search Engine Optimization is an excellent service,
but only when it is white hat. Two categorizations divide SEO into authentic
and scam- Black hat & White Hat.
Most Common SEO
Black Hat & White Hat SEO-
Definition
White Hat SEO
White Hat SEO is a
genuine practice of strategies used to uplift your website on Google’s ranking
sector with authentic plans of following and understanding Google’s algorithm.
Black Hat SEO
You must have had an
idea by the name that it is a practice that is simply against SEO guidelines.
So if we go step by step in the business formation, you will develop your
website to launch your business in the digital world. Now you will be looking
for a company that can help you grow on search engines and bring in quick
traffic. And you find one company that has promised and guaranteed you that you
will be on the first page of Google's search results in no time.
The scene flips, and now
Google has banned your website from its search results entirely, citing
unethical web practices. The company, digital marketing agency, or SEO expert
you took the service from is no longer available or responding to your calls.
What went wrong? You
trusted your online marketing strategy to a black hat marketer. These black hat
marketers use unethical strategies to help your website rank on the search
engine within a few days. But that happiness lasts only for a month, and then
your website will fall down to the core of search engines ending up getting
banned.
Now let's find out the
top SEO Scams that are a part of our daily lives and in abundance.
1. Assured ranking on Google's first page
Given the competition
for your business on Google's ranking pages, do you think you can rank on the
first page within months? No is the simple answer.
Google completely denies
the top ranking factor through AdWords or even organically. Even if you rank on
the first page on the first position, it is never guaranteed that you will
remain at the pinnacle, and the competition is extraordinarily high.
When we see the top
rankers from our industry ranking high on the first page of Google, we know
that they haven't succeeded overnight and have spent thousands of dollars on
their digital marketing, including SEO, SEM, and Adwords.
2.
Aquiantaces With Google
Most companies claim
that they are in close relations with people working at Google and can inform
them about all the loopholes of Google. This might be a true statement up to
some extent, but there's no depth in this truth; it is rather misleading.
Companies have Google
partnerships and are known as Google partners only when it comes to Google Ads.
Google assigns account representatives to the marketing companies, who are also
known as Agency Development Managers. But if you think that would really help
you to rank on Google, it's time to come out of the bubble.
3.
Clueless Hipster
This type of company
provides some other kind of services, typically web development. Over time, the
cost of development has gone down drastically with the advent of WordPress,
where a few of these web development firms buy pre-designed professional
templates and churn them out as fast as they can.
This brings down the
amount of work and the amount people should be paying for this. And with the
rise of drag and drop websites, builders, especially small business owners, are
able to build websites for themselves. This is where numerous firms get into a
hosting web game where this can be turned into a SCAM. These companies will
start pushing maintenance contracts and will start dipping their toes into
SEO services.
Few of these SEO companies can charge you a few thousand dollars every single month depending on
what type of business you are or how many locations you have, and this
high-margin service becomes attractive for smaller firms who are struggling for
cash.
And it's relatively easy
for them to sell el-p caused a typically since they already have some type of
existing customer base. The main is to provide an excellent service or build a
good website, so business owners can keep accepting their sales pitches. The
problem is that these firms have no idea what they are doing. Most of them
create a Google My Business page and make a few tweaks based on recommendations
from that, which is complete the free. Stop every word and city they can into
the header text and the site.
The genuine SEO service providers will keep every detail of their functioning transparent and will take
your permission at every instance. They won't just create your Google My
Business page but will also do all the necessary research as per the
requirements of different websites. There are several kinds of SEO that
different domains of businesses require. Genuine SEO companies will always
ask your business and will suggest to you the type of SEO that is of the need.
IMPORTANT: NOT ALL WEBSITE DESIGNING COMPANIES ARE SCAMS, BUT
FEW OF THEM ARE GENUINE AS WELL. ALL YOU NEED TO DO IS RESEARCH PROPERLY ABOUT
THE BEST SEO
COMPANY YOU ARE GOING TO TAKE SERVICES FROM.
4.
Backlinks will make or break your website.
Backlinks are the most
important ranking factor for SEO, but at the same time, the number one reason
why most website gets deindexed by Google, get penalized, and get put in the
naughty corner by Google. So you have to be very careful with the backlinks because
you can build backlinks the right way or the wrong way, which includes black
hat, white hat, and crap hat.
The biggest problem is
if you don't build the right type of backlinks, you are the one who's gonna get
burnt. So SEO companies or freelancers will come along, and they will claim of
built thousands of backlinks but actually, at the same time, they are terribly
low-quality backlinks like a Black hat that you don't want on your site.
These people can use
PBNs, Blog comments, or spammy forums which might become a huge problem for you.
So be aware of the type of backlinks you are getting, how are your search
engine optimizer going to build them, and what are they going to do to make sure
they are high-quality links to your site? Since backlinks bring authority to
your site.
The right companies will
let you know the importance of link building, will be very transparent and will
explain to you the complete format.
5. Avoid
Hiring Anyone without Proven Results
Many fraud SEO companies can be very
convincing and persuasive, but at the same time, if these companies have no
proven results, consider this a red signal. In order to avoid these, you need
to check their reviews, case studies, and testimonials, make sure that this
person or company is confident of their services and make sure they are not
overconfident.
An authentic and worthy
SEO company has its own project and websites from which they are already
earning because if they are good at SEO, they can also do it for their clients.
It's like if you have a chef, but they don't eat their own cooked food, you
will definitely not hire them since they don't have confidence in themselves.
Google Ranking Factors
Google uses hundreds of
ranking Signals and tweaks its algorithms around 500 to 600 times per year. And
many of these ranking factors can't even be looked at independently. It's not
to say that they are important, but an average person doing SEO for their site
doesn't need to worry about 200 + ranking factors.
So today, I am going to
walk you through the most important Google ranking factors, so you stay focused
on the things that matter the most.
#1 Quality backlinks
The first and most important ranking factor is
quality backlinks. Backlinks form the basis of PageRank, the foundation of
Google's ranking algorithms. They mention it on their "how to search
work" page, and they have tweeted about it; independent studies confirm
the relationship between backlinks and organic traffic. But not all links are
created equal. There are a lot of factors that contribute to a backlink's
ability to push a page higher in the SERPs.
And the two most
important are relevance and authority.
#2 Freshness
The next ranking signal
is freshness. Freshness is a query-dependent ranking factor, meaning it's more
important for some queries than others.
For example, a query
like "Tesla news" has super-fresh results. And that's because people
want information on current news and not something that happened four years
ago. But freshness isn't limited to just new topics.
If we look at the SERP
for the query "best headphones," you will see that all of the
top-ranking pages have the current year in the title.
But freshness is
unimportant as a factor for a query like "how to tie a tie" since
nothing has really changed. Hence, keep your page content updated for searches
that require freshness.
#3 Search intent
Search Intent is
arguably the most important ranking factor; search intent is likely the most
overlooked.
Search intent represents
the reason behind a searcher's query. When someone searches for "how to
make a chicken soup" up, they want to find a recipe. When they search for
the best headphones, they want to see a listicle with a variety of different
headphones.
And the way we determine
search intent is by looking at the top-ranking pages and identifying the three
C's of search intent.
THE THREE C's OF SEARCH
INTENT
1. Content-type
Most of the top pages
include:
- Blog posts
- Product Pages
-Category Pages
- Landing Pages
2. Content Format
Most of the top pages
include:
-How to
-Tutorials
-Listicles
-Opinion Editorials
3. Content Angle
This is the most
dominant USP that the top-ranking pages are using.
Of the 3 Cs, content
type and content format are absolutely critical to match. Otherwise, you'll be
hard-pressed to rank high for any meaningful query.
#4 Content Depth
The next ranking factor
is content depth. Depth is about hitting the talking points of a topic that
searchers want and expect to see. For example, looking at the SERP for
"best watch brands," we will see that search intent tells us we need
to create a listicle blog post about luxury watches. But this doesn't tell us
what is important from a content perspective other than that we should talk
about Breitling instead of Timex. To figure that out, you need to visit the top
ranking pages and look for similarities between the content. And if you look at
the top ranking pages, you will find that they all mention something about
price. They all mention popular brands like Rolex, and they all talk about
technical specifications.
Hence, if you want to
rank through these keywords, you should practice citing all these points in
your blog. It's not about limiting your creativity or copying others, but since
Google is ranking similar pages at the top, it's telling us what they want us
to see.
And since Google's job
is to deliver the most relevant result. For any given query, it's probably what
the searcher wants to see another way you can find talking points is to look at
the People Also Ask box in the SERP. Now one other thing which is highly
recommended is to do a content gap analysis at the page level. This is a bit
different because it will show you typical keyword rankings between the top
ranking pages.
#5 Using the HTTPS protocol
In 2014, Google
announced HTTPS as a very lightweight signal affecting fewer than 1% of global
queries. And while using HTTPS probably won't make a useful impact on your
site's ranking, it's a quick win that you can do in under 5 minutes. Using the
insecure HTTP protocol, then it's probably worth changing.
Google wants to rank
content that offers visitors a positive experience. Because if people are
finding good results from their search engine, then they will keep using it. So
the absolute basics would be to try and keep visitors on your site for as long
as possible without any trickery.
Create easy-to-read
content and a well-organized design, and go easy on ads and pop-ups. Basically,
you want to have a site that is designed around the user's needs first. Now
terms of the way they measure user satisfaction are debatable.
Conclusion
So this was an all-in-one SEO guide for you
where you got to know about the most common SEO scams, how to avoid them, what
type of agencies are the best digital marketing agency, and what are the Google
ranking factors. Hope you enjoyed it and all your queries were solved.
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