One of the most common ways bargain SEO companies lure business owners in is by selling a guaranteed page one ranking. This might be for a few keywords or even ten, depending on the price they charge. It sounds enticing because, after all, who doesn’t want to be on the first page of Google? However, if you hire an SEO company that offers this guarantee, you’re likely getting ripped off.
No reputable SEO agency will ever offer guaranteed first-page rankings on Google. Any that should be avoided. Even if they do deliver on their promise, it will likely be for keywords that don’t get much search volume and won’t be helpful to your business.
Moreover, they may use black hat tactics to get you on the first page. These strategies go against Google’s terms of service and try to trick its algorithms rather than earn a ranking naturally. Some examples of these tactics are buying links or hiding keywords through invisible text. These used to work well in the past, but Google’s algorithms are now far more intelligent, and these types of tactics will be quickly punished, dropping you from a high position to no rank at all.
It’s also important to remember that many factors outside of an SEO agency’s control can affect your rankings. For example, if your company has a poor reputation or experiences a sudden increase in competition due to a competitor’s success, this can quickly impact your search engine results. This makes it impossible for any reputable SEO agency to guarantee Google first-page rankings in such short amounts of time. This is why a trusted long-term SEO strategy is always the best option.
Low-Quality Content
As Google continues to get better at separating the wheat from the chaff, it’s devaluing low-quality content and elevating sites with high-quality. This summer, Google updated its Quality Rater Guidelines. These are helpful for SEOs to know so they can avoid low-quality content and produce what Google wants, which is pages that are true, accurate and useful to searchers. For more information about the bargain SEO, click here.
A low-quality page may contain insufficient main content to serve its purpose, or it may be untrustworthy or inaccurate. It may also have deceptive or harmful content, such as a shopping checkout page that requests sensitive personal information like government ID numbers or bank account details. Content that promotes hate against groups of people based on socioeconomic status, political beliefs or ethnicity is also considered low-quality. Content that contains links that redirect users to spammy or malicious websites is also low-quality.
Another common problem is thin content, which can be written to rank higher in search engines without adding any real value to readers. Narrow content often comprises a few lines of text thrown together without any thought or consideration for the user. This type of content is bad for SEO because it doesn’t give searchers what they want and will not stand the test of time.
Low-quality pages may have inappropriate or excessive advertising or broken functionality that prevents users from consuming the content. Examples include pop-ups interrupting the user experience or interstitials that make it challenging to read the main content. Pages that are out-of-date or no longer relevant are also rated as low-quality.
A new SEO best practice is to review all your pages and determine which ones need a clean-up. Use a spreadsheet (we’ve created a content clean-up template you can download if you’re a Pathfinder SEO subscriber) to identify your highest-quality pages and those needing improvements. Then, work on implementing the changes necessary to make them suitable. Once your content is improved, you can focus on the tactics necessary to rank higher in search engines.
Black Hat Techniques
Black Hat SEO is any practice that violates search engine guidelines to get a website higher rankings. It involves unethical tactics like keyword stuffing, cloaking, and using private link networks. This type of SEO might work for a while, but it can backfire quickly as search engines continue to update their algorithms.
It’s important to know what black hat techniques are to avoid them. By avoiding these practices, you can ensure that your website is optimised well and won’t be penalised by search engines.
For example, one common black hat tactic is to include a link to the site in blog comments. This is less common today because search engines have updated their algorithm to discount blog comment links. Additionally, most authoritative blogs now make their links nofollow by default. This means that search engines do not follow these links, and they do not pass any authority.
Another black hat technique is to create duplicate content on the web page. This happens less often nowadays because search engines have updated their algorithms to recognise duplicate and low-quality content. Additionally, Google has a tool that checks whether or not your content is original.
Lastly, some black hat SEO actors will set up redirects to send search engines to a different site version than users. This is a clear violation of search engine guidelines and can result in a penalty from the search engine. For more information about the bargain SEO, click here.