The Good, The Bad And The Ugly – Choosing The Right SEO Consultant!

SEO consultant services are widely available these days, and that’s no surprise. With the Internet growing at a rapid pace, competition to get a website noticed is fierce. Everyone wants that elusive top spot, and rightly so. It’s a known fact that searchers very often don’t get past the first page of results when looking for information, a product, or a service online

So SEO services are much in demand, especially amongst businesses in a competitive market. It’s true to say that SEO is not an easy task. As one of the main players among Internet search engines, Google alone has over 200 different factors it takes into account when analysing websites for quality, authority, relevance, and trustworthiness. SEO is not something most companies have the resources, either in terms of time or knowledge, to tackle on their own. That’s why most invest in professional SEO services. But if you are hiring an SEO consultant for your own business, how can you tell the difference between the good, the bad and the ugly? There are three main types of SEO tactics, strategies, and techniques: in the trade, these are known as bad, black hat and white hat SEO. What characterises each of these? Dealing with each in turn, bad SEO is the product of poor planning and little detailed knowledge of search engine optimisation principles. You might expect this at the early stages when your website is in the process of being developed. Many web developers concentrate on the architecture and appearance of the site, rather than the content itself, which is fair enough. After all, that’s what their expertise encompasses.

It can be fixed at a later date; but for best results, if planning a new website, make sure you employ a developer who can demonstrate SEO expertise. Black hat SEO, on the other hand, is often practised by SEO experts. There is a strategy, and that’s to undermine the effectiveness of the search engines’ algorithms by using tricks and underhand methods. You can get away with poor quality, uninformed content on your website and still rise quickly to the top of the search engine results. But be warned: you will not stay there. Those algorithms are designed to sort the good from the bad, rewarding sites that offer users high quality, informative and trusted content and penalising those that waste searchers’ time. The algorithms are modified and updated regularly, so your site will plummet to the bottom of the pile as fast as it rose to the top, leaving your reputation in tatters. For the best SEO agency, look for one that offers white hat techniques. These play by the search engines’ rules. There is no chicanery or deception. Instead, you are investing in great quality content that delivers what your potential customers expect. And they are drawn to you through social media outreach, quality backlinks, and an easy-to-navigate and appealing website, to name but a few deliverables.

In short, hire an SEO consultant who employs white hat strategies, and you will see your website rise to the top gradually and steadily. And once you’re there, you’ll stay there; because search engines like Google will reward you for delivering what your audiences actually want and need.