If you are an avid reader of our blog, then you will know that we are keenly interested in helping our readers to distinguish between the good, bad and ugly of SEO Firms on the Web. In fact, at ESalesGuru.com, we have specifically implemented a "Pre-Screening" process in our Outsourcing Portal to ensure that we are recruiting the best quality SEO and other Internet Marketing related specialists and firms in our marketplace.

Now, I am going to presume that not everyone is entirely familiar with the concept of White Hat or Black Hat SEO strategies. Quick Definitions….

Black Hat SEO strategies include particular methods of improving site rankings that are disapproved by the Search Engines and may involve deception. A few examples of black hat techniques include:

• Hidden text or links
• Cloaking or sneaky redirects (Cloaking is the process of delivering one version of a page to search engine spiders/bots and another version to human visitors
• multiple pages
• domains/sub-domains with duplicate content
• doorway pages with little or no content

On the flip side, White Hat SEO strategies include tactics that are approved by the Search Engines and do not involve any deception. White Hat practices are not just about following guidelines, but about ensuring the content a search engine indexes and ranks is the same content a user will see. White Hat SEO firms want to create content that is both user and spider friendly - key distinction.

Now, I am personally quite familiar with the use of black hat strategies as a couple of years, we had a super affiliate that was making killer revenues through a web of doorway pages. He had a good run for sometime, but eventually began to dip in performance as his cloak and dagger game with the SEs went south! Now, we eventually stopped working with this fellow as we recognized that these practices were not good for our product and ultimately could lead to us getting banned in Google. Google certainly does not discriminate who they ban from the SE’s as about a year ago, BMW Germany was black-listed by Google for using deceptive SEO Practices. BMW apologized and eventually was re-instated.

So, whether you are presently outsourcing your SEO campaigns or have plans to, it is important to ask yourself a couple key questions:

1. Is my SEO Firm employing BlackHat practices in attempts to enhance the performance of our campaigns?

2. If so, are you prepared to tow the line and risk the possibility that Google will eventually catch up and ban your site?

The reinstatement process with Google is not exactly a quick and dirty process, so I would think twice about being involved with a SEO Firm that appears to be employing Blackhat practices. Yes, Blackhat SEO experts are VERY smart and can potentially help you get some great rankings for sometime, but is that worth the potential ban of your site and the overall tarnishing of your company and image as a whole?

Most top SEO firms and specialists are commited to WhiteHat Practices, but closely evaluate those specialists that boast top rankings in a unusually short period of time as they might just be using deceptive practices that could hurt you in the long run…

Food for thought……

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