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Organic SEO is commonly thought of as simply the “naturally” or “organically” occurring search
results that are found on the left side of a search engine results page below and to the left of the
paid listings. Usually, these results are represented as unpaid and the product of algorithmic
indexing of websites. That is also the natural perception of the services offered by most SEO
Agencies. However, there are some successful SEO Agencies which take this definition a step
further than just this ranking service. These companies do not merely taking ranking into
account. This is what defines a professional “Whitehat” SEO Agency versus one that uses
“Blackhat” techniques to improve natural rankings.
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The “Whitehat”
Organic SEO Agency
The prime difference between a Whitehat and Blackhat
organic SEO agency is the methodology
used to achieve results as well as the long term results themselves. The agency that practices
Whitehat techniques normally advises on and performs SEO services with a content-based
approach. This approach will generally aim to improve website content pages while focusing on
specific keywords to optimize and rank. This is the strictest definition of
organic SEO in that it
adheres to the terms of service and webmaster guidelines of the major search engines as well as
following the generally accepted procedures for long term keyword ranking success. This
approach, while usually involving more work, creativity, and patience does prove to survive
search engine algorithm updates better while reducing the risk of triggering search engine
filtering, penalties and bans.
The “Blackhat”
Organic SEO Agency
A Blackhat
organic SEO agency is one that looks for a quick fix approach to improving ranking.
This method of so-called “
organic SEO” is commonly accomplished by means of technology and
automation. For example, the Blackhat
organic SEO agency may automate the search engine
and directory submission processes. While they practices are frowned upon by both search
engines and the Whitehat
organic SEO communities, they do not actually violate any laws—only
the search engines terms of service and webmaster guidelines. These practices are also difficult
to detect, therefore they may be successful at first to a degree. The problems come when the
search engines become wise to practices such as these and alter their algorithms to weed-out
sites using such practices. In fact, some search engines are known to filter, penalize and
sometimes ban all the sites on a similar IP as the offending site. Another common Blackhat
practice of an
organic SEO consulting company is IP delivery or “cloaking.” This technology
based “optimization” technique delivers different content to search engines than it would to users.
The search engines get very simple, keyword-rich and highly optimized pages which would be
very unfriendly to users, while users get a page that is very user-friendly but would not generally
be considered search engine friendly.
More Ways a True
Organic SEO Firm Will Stand Out
One of the most important ranking factors, which any
organic SEO firm will tell you, is link
acquisition. This method of citation distributes relevant importance from one webpage to another.
In this way, search engines can more readily define a good site from a bad one. The Blackhat
organic SEO firm will try and manipulate the link citation acquisition process by applying
technological methods to automate the process and cheat the system as best as possible.
Remember: those citations are deemed important in aiding ranking because they represent the
importance of a webpage; they should not benefit a website that has had its link acquisition
automated or gamed in an artificial manner. When this happens, the so-called
organic SEO firm
will use expedient linking schemes such as buying text links, link farms, and free-for-all
directories. The true
organic SEO firm will help build quality in your site by adding good content
that will encourage the natural linking process. It will also continually look for links from industry
related websites that not only promise to bring qualified traffic to your page, but also aid in
representing the website as a trusted authority page in the industry. When search engine
algorithms see that your closely related peers are citing your page as important, the rankings will
support the efforts. The Blackhat
organic SEO firm will, on the other hand, look to getting as
many links as possible—from anywhere. Algorithms are always improving and distinguishing
between good and bad links is getting easier for search engines to accomplish causing the
devaluation of low quality irrelevant links and possibly even the filtering of pages that are known
to be recipients of mass quantities of these extraneous citations.
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Why an Algorithm Update Scares a “Blackhat” SEO Company
A Blackhat
organic SEO company will use gaps in search engine ranking algorithms to design
technological solutions to improve rankings. While these tricks are not illegal, they raise the
chances that the search results delivered by search engines will be of lower quality because that
organic SEO company will fool the search engine into showing results that are not earned.
Search engines stay in business by providing highly relevant results and gathering market share
in the process—if you like the results from a search offering one day, you will come back another
day to use the same service. The search engine capitalizes on this by selling ad space in the
form of pay per-click advertising (among other methods). If the search engine is fooled by a
Blackhat
organic SEO company, it will display less than relevant results, the user may notice this
and possibly look elsewhere for their search provider. To combat artificially induced results, the
search engines are constantly updating their algorithms to prevent these sorts of schemes from
synthetically improving search results. When this happens, the artificially improved results will
decline in the rankings and the Blackhat
organic SEO company will likely start getting angry calls
and E-Mails from their clients demanding better results. This usually sends these types of
companies scrambling to find the next ‘quick fix’ technology solution to game the search engines
another way—and the cycle continues. This is the main reason why the results from artificially
produce rankings by Blackhat
organic SEO companies are generally short-term solutions and do
not offer any significant website improvements.
Why Algorithm Updates are Great for those Companies Offering True
Organic SEO Services
The same phenomenon that causes artificial rankings to drop, leaves empty search engine
results page slots for quality pages produced by true
organic SEO services to move up and fill
those voids. Throughout the history of search, there has been a common denominator for those
sites with constantly good rankings for major industry keywords: they have offered pages that are
of great quality and serve a real purpose to their users produced by those same Whitehat organic
SEO services. In essence, true
organic SEO service practitioners do not worry about ‘algorithmic
shifts’ and do not need to make major re-optimization changes thereby saving future time and
money in the process. Over time, as sites mature, the well optimized Whitehat
organic SEOwebsites will steadily gain position due to naturally occurring factors incorporated into almost
every search engines algorithm including domain age, link profile, and industry authority.
The Other Side of Site Traffic from the “Blackhat”
Organic SEOConsulting Company
If you are interesting in an
organic SEO consulting company, you should look at the big picture of
search engine marketing—not simply getting a site ranked. One must analyze the quality,
demographics and mindset of the traffic achieved by typically artificial
organic SEO consulting. If
you deliver a high ranking to a website that provides a poor or irrelevant user experience, what is
the actual likelihood the user will spend some time on the site and act toward a conversion? The
answer is that it is quite unlikely. The user will feel fooled and will quickly resolve to use the
“back” button on their browser. In the end,
organic SEO consulting that uses automated and
underhanded technology-based techniques to trick the search engines into displaying irrelevant
results hurts the users, the search engines, and ultimately that same Blackhat
organic SEOconsulting company because it has poor performance, customer retention and loyalty.
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What to Expect from a True
Organic SEO Service
In such a new and dynamic industry as SEO, every firm has different methodologies, beliefs,
principals and ethics that is adheres to. That being said, we have made a sharp distinction
between the short-term, high risk (possible) results of a Blackhat or artificial
organic SEO service
verses those of Whitehat or true
organic SEO services. While the Whitehat service will preach
and practice good SEO copywriting, keyword prominence and natural quality backlink acquisition,
the Blackhat service will look for an easy way to fool the search engines through technology. A
true organic SEO service company should be looked at as a long term investment while a
Blackhat organic SEO service company is a quick fix solution that will undoubtedly lead to
disappointing results and high costs in the end. If you are faced with a choice between the two
and are not sure which is right for you, the test is that a good
organic SEO firm will not accept a
contract that refuses to add good content to the site and improve the overall user experience.
