The difference between a white hat agency Austin that utilizes good or white hat SEO strategies and black hat or bad SEO strategies is sabotaging your company or not sabotaging your company. Even if you don’t know that black hat SEO is hurting your website and digital strategy, it still happens, even to this day sadly. 

What is good SEO?

SEO is the technical process that involves on-page and off-page SEO strategies such as keyword research, blogging content, optimization of product and/ or service pages. This is all in an effort to bring in more qualified website traffic to produce more qualified lead generation. 

For example, if you are a company who sells swimming pools and accessories for said swimming pools, but you are attracting consumers searching for other products not related to swimming pools, that means the SEO strategy is a bit off. 

When SEO is done correctly, a website will organically attract relevant traffic to your company. 

A good white hat agency Austin SEO strategy follows guidelines established by search engines, produces quality content and keeps the user at the forefront.

What is bad SEO?

Bad SEO is like the cheap knock-off pair of headphones you bought at the discount store. They were cheap, worked one day and fell apart the next.

This shady strategy is referred to as black hat SEO and works hard at cheating the system to achieve higher search engine rankings much faster. 

SEO is an extensive, ongoing and extremely competitive process, so attempting to find ways around it is understandable, but highly frowned upon. Remember - Google knows all!

Is bad SEO really that bad?

Yes! Black hat SEO puts your website at risk of a lower search engine ranking or being completely wiped out of search engine results entirely. That alone makes any quick results simply not worth it. Google is diligent in their SEO guidelines, and update them frequently to combat bad SEO practices. 

How to identify bad SEO 

As a longtime white hat agency Austin professional, it is not uncommon for our agency to remedy the black hat techniques carried out by other service providers.

If you have suspected* your SEO strategy is not quite what you thought it would be, here are two quick ways to identify poor practices.

1. Irrelevant Keywords

First, a reputable white hat agency Austin will work with your company to build a keyword strategy. Using relevant keywords is what will drive the right traffic to your company and build authority in your website!

Using irrelevant keywords with the intention of gaining any traffic possible, is a bad SEO strategy.

2. Duplicate Content

AKA plagiarism. The internet is a weird, large place with endless content. In the event you discover any of your website content has been stolen from other websites, put up the red flag.

Google rewards high quality, unique and current content, which is exactly what a good SEO company should be producing for your business.

Having an SEO strategy is an important part of your business's online presence. Reputable marketing companies will be diligent and ethical in the service they provide you, because in the end, your success is their success.

*Disclaimer: Always keep an open line of communication with the SEO professional you are working with. A true expert will be able to explain the reasoning behind what they are doing to grow your online traffic. If you suspect something phishy in your SEO strategy, contact your provider first for reasonable insight.