A lot of SEO professionals agree: Google hates them. Feeling this way is somewhat understandable; after all, the purpose of SEO is to use the algorithm that Google has come up with to improve the search placement of a client website. Not a big shock that Google and SEO aren’t BFFs.
Part of the reason for this adversarial relationship is because of black hat SEO tactics. These lousy sites are essentially ‘the turd in the punchbowl’of the SEO party. Black hat sites promote themselves to the top of Google rankings using shady techniques such as keyword stuffing and link farming. If you read the content on these sites out loud, it’s incomprehensible. Black hat causes the user experience to nosedive, and they also piss off legitimate SEO professionals and SEO companies who have spent the time and the money to create good, usable websites with valuable content. These folks frequently see their websites sink in the Google search rankings, as sites with heftier budgets and black hat SEO teams rise to the top.
Black hat is the reason that Google spends millions of dollars per year updating its algorithm to punish unethical SEO companies. These shady companies are the reason for the recent Caffeine, Panda and Penguin Google updates, which have really lowered the boom on any SEO companies who violate the quality guidelines of Google.
If your SEO company only uses legitimate SEO tactics, you should not be worried. However, many honest SEO people might feel as if Google is trying to target you as well. They aren’t really, they just want you to play by Google’s rules. Google has added some things to the algorithm to make SEO more difficult, but that does not mean you need to go out of business. All you should do is to review your SEO techniques and possibly incorporate some new concepts into your routine. For example:
- For the love of God, don’t keyword stuff! Many people are putting too many keywords into their headings, body copy and headlines with keywords. If your copy sounds awkward when you read it out loud, you probably have too many keywords in there.
- Use social media to promote your sites. With so many people using Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin, Google is aware if your site is getting good feedback. This sort of thing is very hard for black hat scammers to fake.
- Get high quality links. Forget quantity. Go for quality. Getting a link from a top website is much more important than 25,000 links from nobodies.
Above all, remember that your site’s users want high quality content that they can use in their lives and business. Good content is what makes the Internet so useful, and Google will always reward that.