It is not realistic to expect most entrepreneurs to be qualified SEO experts or to be abreast with the ever-changing trends and scenario. Then how can a business owner choose a competent SEO agency with little or no formal education or knowledge about SEO? He just needs to watch out for the following red flags.
The Company Guarantees First Page Rankings
Any SEO agency that gives you a guarantee of first page ranking should be treated with suspicion as they are not being completely honest about it. Most websites could and should appear on the first page as far as the brand name is concerned, provided the brand name is not something very popular or common.
SEO agencies that assure you quick first page rankings for even competitive terms such as “dentist” or “baseball hats” or even “digital marketing” are in all likelihood involved in black-hat SEO. This is because we know that only by developing a system for tricking search engines into providing first page rankings; a SEO can confidently guarantee such a thing.
You must understand that search engine approved, organic, and natural white-hat tactics are generally a time-consuming and a long-term strategy. Moreover, it would be pretty tough to achieve good rankings for competitive keywords. No reliable SEO agency would guarantee first page rankings with a short deadline guarantee.
They Seem Too Nice To Be Real
You must have got some unsolicited emails that offer a free website assessment or complimentary SEO audit including a monthly SEO just for $99. This should be treated as a red flag. This sort of business strategy could be cost-effective and viable for only those SEO agencies that have some sort of black-hat Link-Farm System which is used for plugging in new websites easily and pretty quickly. Generally speaking, you must be careful and skeptical, while looking for SEO agencies. You must understand that any white-hat SEO would be requiring a considerable amount of time and quite a lot of effort to be effective. An advanced SEO course will help you understand this matter more precisely.
They Follow Secret Methodology
There is nothing secretive about top SEO practices. So, if any agency does not come up with open details about how they are planning to enhance your search engine rankings, it is in all probability because they are resorting to black-hat methods. Transparency should definitely be something that a white-agency would promise all through the process.
They Use Deceptive Ways
Black-hat SEO agencies usually rely on the fact that their clients are not aware of the black-hat tactics and they prefer to be deceptive about their methods. Sometimes the SEO agency people themselves are not fully able to identify the finer distinctions between a white-hat and a black-hat tactic. You must study carefully any proposed tactics and evaluate them. If you find them deceptive, stay away.
Here is a typical, but denigrated black-hat tactic that an agency could propose. They might suggest that you consider adding keywords to the white footer of the website in a white-colored font. This would ensure that visitors would not see the existing keywords, but the search engines would be able to view that. This would be communicating the intention of the webpage to the search engines. It would then consider the web page as a better resource on the particular topic without really noticing what human visitors are actually seeing.
In this context, you must always keep in mind that search engines would actually approve your page to be among the top rankings if it genuinely deserves to be there. Hiding keywords with the sole intention of improving your website’s rankings is a way of tricking the search engines and should be avoided as that is surely a black-hat tactic.
On the contrary, a white-hat SEO would ask you to consider adding keywords to the title tag that would be appearing in the tab of the browser of a visitor for describing the page. In such a case, it would be wise to insert a keyword to the title tag for explaining what exactly the page is all about.
A business owner must exercise a lot of caution, while choosing a SEO agency. This is simply because a so-called white-hat SEO agency could adopt black-hat tactics once you hire them. To be on the safe side, as a concerned website owner you must make it a point to stay 100% involved throughout the process even though you are not always able to comprehend it.