There was a fascinating article last month in the New York Times’ Business section (thanks to my friend and colleague Julie Du Brow for pointing it out) that discussed “black hat” vs “white hat” search engine optimization, singling out JC Penney and BMW as two companies who have employed some underhanded tactics.
A lot of my clients are unclear on what search engine optimization entails, and when so many companies are calling them up promising to get them on the “first page of Google”, they are understandably wary. And I encourage them to be, mainly because a statement such as “We can get you on the first page of Google” doesn’t really mean anything.
What do I mean by that? Well, our blogging services get our clients on the first page of Google too, and in a very search-engine friendly way. But it all depends on what keywords are typed in that shows our clients on the first page of Google. We can research some appropriate keywords and use them in our blogs to get good results, but let’s face it: if us ladies at Either/Or Media could predict what customers were going to type into Google, we’d be sitting on a beach somewhere with umbrella-topped cocktails in our hands and a gazillion dollars in the bank.
Alas, we can only use our formidable experience and research skills rather than trying to beat the Google algorithms to get our clients at the top of the search engine rankings. But these “black hat” SEO companies don’t have that kind of integrity. They know that Google and other search engines raise the rankings of a site if there’s a lot of incoming links from other sources. And we agree, and advise our clients to have links to their site from as many sources as possible, but we suggest sites like Yelp.com, Google Places, vendors’ sites, LinkedIn, etc. What JC Penney and BMW were doing was paying random, static sites to have a link to their site on it. Most of these sites had no other purpose but to link to other companies sites in exchange for credits or currency.
These black-hat SEO companies’ excuse is that if your company doesn’t pay for this kind of service, you’re missing out, because your competitors are doing it. Well, if all of your competitors were dumping toxic waste in the ocean, would you do it too? That’s a pretty lame excuse if you ask us. Plus, it means that the “penalty for getting caught is a pair of virtual concrete shoes: the company sinks in Google’s results,” as the Times puts it.
Whether or not a company gets kicked off of Google, do you really want your company to be seen in using these unsavory (but not illegal) tactics that make you look, quite frankly, desperate? And that’s what JC Penney was. They’d canned their catalog and lost $4 billion in revenue, and tried to bolster their online sales by pouring money into the website, which was only making around $1.4 billion in revenue. How’s that black-hat SEO working for you now, JC Penney?
For more information on the difference between black-hat and white-hat SEO and for quotes on our blogging service, contact Either/Or Media now for a free marketing consultation. Use our online form or just give us a call at our brand new office: (949) 305-3223.
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