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Search Engine Optimization (SEO) experts for local / eCommerce SEO; site audits to identify SEO issues; SEO tools (SEMRush, Ahrefs, Moz Pro, Google Analytics, Google Tag Manager). Optimize your website and corresponding digital channels with white-hat SEO tactics only, improving your business web presence to support customer needs, business goals and brand messaging. Find Search Engine Optimization (SEO) WFH freelancers on February 22, 2025 who work remotely. Read less
Here are the 10 key technical techniques of White Hat SEO:
Use HTTPS: Ensuring your website uses HTTPS protocol for security is crucial. This not only protects user data but also is a ranking factor in search engines.
Fix Crawl Errors: Addressing issues that prevent search engine bots from crawling your site effectively ensures all your pages can be indexed. This includes fixing 404 errors, robots.txt issues, and ensuring the sitemap is up-to-date.
Improve Site Speed: Faster loading times improve user experience and are a ranking factor. Techniques include optimizing images, leveraging browser caching, and reducing server response time.
Fix Broken Links: Broken links can negatively affect user experience and SEO. Regularly checking and fixing or removing these links is important.
Ensure Mobile-Friendliness: With mobile searches dominating, ensuring your site is responsive or has a mobile version is essential for SEO.
Implement Structured Data: This helps search engines understand the content of your pages better, potentially leading to rich snippets in search results which can improve click-through rates.
Canonicalization: Use canonical tags to prevent issues with duplicate content by specifying the preferred version of a page to search engines.
Optimize for Core Web Vitals: Google's Core Web Vitals metrics focus on loading performance, interactivity, and visual stability, all of which are part of the page experience signal in Google's ranking algorithm.
Check and Optimize Crawl Depth: Ensuring that important pages are not too deep in the site structure helps search engines find and index them more easily.
Manage Redirects Properly: Fix redirect chains and loops to ensure a smooth user and crawler experience. Use 301 redirects for permanent moves to maintain link equity.
These techniques focus on improving site structure, user experience, and adherence to search engine guidelines, which are core to white hat SEO practices.
When considering an SEO agency or freelance "expert", there are several red flags you should be aware of to avoid engaging with less reputable or effective services. Here are some key warning signs based on current insights:
Guarantees of Top Rankings: Any agency promising guaranteed top rankings, especially for competitive keywords, is likely employing questionable tactics. SEO is inherently unpredictable due to constant algorithm updates and changes in competitor strategies.
Lack of Transparency: If an agency is secretive about their methods or doesn't provide clear, detailed reports on progress, this should raise concerns. Transparency in strategy and results is crucial.
One-Size-Fits-All Approach: SEO needs to be tailored to your specific business, industry, and goals. Agencies that offer generic solutions without understanding your particular needs or market are a red flag.
Focus on Quantity Over Quality: Agencies that emphasize the number of backlinks or keywords without discussing quality or relevance are likely not focused on sustainable SEO practices. Keyword stuffing or buying low-quality backlinks can lead to penalties.
No Custom Strategy: An agency should develop a strategy based on your unique business goals, audience, and current site status. If they can't articulate how they will achieve specific objectives for your business, be cautious.
Unrealistic Timelines: SEO is a long-term strategy; promises of immediate results or significantly quick improvements are unrealistic and often indicate the use of black hat techniques.
Long-Term Contracts Without Proof of Performance: Be wary of agencies pushing for long-term contracts without first demonstrating their ability to deliver results or offering an exit clause if performance is unsatisfactory.
Poor Communication: If an agency is hard to reach, doesn’t respond to queries, or fails to provide regular updates, this indicates a lack of commitment to your project.
Low Pricing: While competitive pricing is good, extremely low prices can be a sign of cutting corners or using automated, spammy SEO tactics. Quality SEO work requires investment in time and expertise.
No Case Studies or References: A credible SEO agency should have case studies or be able to provide references from previous clients. The absence of this can suggest a lack of successful track record or experience.
When looking for an SEO agency, it's essential to do due diligence, ask for detailed plans, check their past work, and ensure their strategies align with ethical SEO practices. Avoid agencies that exhibit these red flags to safeguard your business’s online presence from ineffective or harmful SEO tactics.
Google actively penalizes websites that engage in bad SEO practices, particularly those categorized as black hat SEO. Here are some of the key black hat SEO techniques that Google penalizes:
Keyword Stuffing: Overloading a page with keywords in an unnatural manner to manipulate search rankings. This can appear in the text, meta tags, alt attributes, etc.
Cloaking: Showing different content or URLs to users than what is shown to search engine bots. This includes using different HTML for search engine crawlers than for actual visitors or redirecting users to different content than what was indexed.
Hidden Text or Links: Using text or links that are invisible to site visitors but readable by search engine bots, often through methods like setting the text color to match the background or using CSS to hide content.
Duplicate Content: Copying content from other websites or reproducing the same content across multiple pages on your site without adding unique value. Google aims to serve unique content in its search results.
Link Schemes: This includes buying links to manipulate PageRank, excessive link exchanges, or using automated programs to create links to your site. Google penalizes both the buyer and seller of such links.
Sneaky Redirects: Redirecting users to a different page than what's shown in search results, which can be done to deceive users or search engines.
Automated Content Generation: Using software to create content with little to no human input, leading to low-quality, unoriginal content that doesn't provide value to users.
Doorway Pages: Creating pages specifically to rank for certain keywords but then redirecting users to another page, often unrelated to the search query.
Spammy Structured Data: Misusing schema markup to mislead about the nature of the content, like marking up non-reviews as reviews or using spammy rich snippets.
Paid Links That Pass PageRank: Paying for links where the anchor text or the link itself manipulates PageRank, which is against Google's Webmaster Guidelines.
Negative SEO: Tactics where competitors might use black hat SEO techniques against your site, like pointing a large number of low-quality links to your domain to try and get it penalized.
Content Scraping: Copying content from other sites without permission, which could lead to penalties for duplicate content.
Google can apply penalties algorithmically or manually. Algorithmic penalties are automatically applied when Google's algorithms detect violations, while manual penalties are issued after human review. Both types can result in reduced rankings or even removal from search results. The goal is to ensure that search results remain relevant and useful for users, rewarding sites that provide value and penalizing those that attempt to manipulate the system.
