I just had a phone call with a company interested in using our SEO services.
The following is an almost word-for-word transcript of part of the phone call – as best as my memory and notes can handle.
Bob: “Okay this all sounds good, just we’re looking for. But can I ask you a question?“
Me: “Of course – fire away.“
Bob: “I get the whole ‘white hat’ approach, and understand that you have to stand up and say these things. But I assume you’re going to be going beyond that, right?“
Me: “……….. um….. actually no. Not at all. If you’re looking for tricks and black-hat techniques, we’re not the company for you.”
Bob: “I get that, I get that. But off the record, I can tell you that I don’t mind if you push a few boundaries. Everyone’s doing it, right?“
Me: [inadvertently using an incredibly snooty British accent] “Probably less today than a few weeks ago. Are you familiar with the Penguin update, and what’s been happening over the last couple of weeks?“
Bob: [laughing gently – flaming my British snooty attitude] “Hey come on, you don’t really believe that shit, right? So they crap all over a handful of high-profile websites to scare everyone. Big deal. This stuff has always worked and nothing’s going to change any time soon.“
So we’re not going to work with this particular company – not because of any principle that I have, but because he thinks we’re naive and I have “some growing up to do”.
To clarify: I don’t think that dodgy SEO techniques are immoral, they’re just stupid.
The Penguin update has one goal: to significantly reduce the quantity of spam in Google’s organic search results.
Users of Google gain – as they see sites that are more relevant to their terms.
White-hat SEOs gain – as many of their sites are seeing a slight increase in traffic due to the garbage that’s been removed.
Black-hat SEOs lose – as many have seen their traffic drop quite dramatically.
Learn from this.
If you use black-hat SEO techniques you may benefit from doing so, you may even benefit enormously, and you may get away with it for a long time.
But sooner or later Google will catch up with you.
And when they do so, the results could be catastrophic.
Matt Cutts from Google gave some useful advice on what to do if you’re hit by penguin, including one chilling comment:
“If you’ve cleaned and still don’t recover, ultimately, you might need to start all over with a fresh site.“
Do yourself, your business and your website a favour. Dismiss black hat SEO as a viable option.
Notes:
(1) He wasn’t called Bob but sounded like one.
(2) This was written on Friday May 11th, but not posted until a few days later. Isn’t technology amazing?
(3) I’m attending an SEO conference in London on the day that this is posted. Bob probably won’t be there.
