Usually a SEO service company falls in either of these 2 categories:
- A "White Hat" search engine optimization company will focus on largely content-based approach and will not violate the terms of service of the major search engines. They are the people who carry some patience along with a concrete plan. They look at the long term picture and help develop a stronger base for the Website. White Hat SEO never needs to fear on getting the Website unduly banned by Search Engines as it’s all about ethically practicing the most recommended guidelines of Search Engines.
- A "Black Hat" search engine optimization company will use all underhanded tricks and tactics to ensure that they can show results within a short time. They often ignore the terms of service of the major search engines. The elevation of search rankings would often seem faked. So never go by those who guarantee you results in short time, as that’s a short term approach that can get your Website banned on all Search Engines.
How do these firms operate?
- Learning from engines vs. exploiting them
A white hat SEO firm looks at long term goals and studies how search engine crawlers ranks some site higher than the others for a searched keyword. After understanding the rules they incorporate those in the site to be optimized. They work within the rules and since these rules have been made by search engines after studying optimizing search results to provide as close a result to what users are trying to search for. This is a longer route and takes time to set up. Whereas a black hat SEO firm only cares enough about rules to break it. They find loopholes in the algorithms set by search engines to fool them into ranking the site high. The problem here is even though your site is highly ranked initially, if the visitors don’t find what they want on your site, the entire purpose behind SEO fails. Once search engine catches black hat tactics the risk of temporary or permanent barring of site is high. - Being an industry resource vs. being a shameless snake oil salesperson
Another major difference in approach of white hat and black hat SEO firms is their approach to content. A white hat SEO organization will emphasize on a website that provides rich SEO content writing that can prove useful while browsing the site along with being a resource within their industry. Whereas the focus of a black hat operator would be ruthless use of keywords to thrust your product and services down the throat of a visitor along with wooing the search engine crawlers to give higher rankings by useless repetitions of chosen keywords. Such an approach will ultimately bomb down since the algorithms of search engine crawlers are updated regularly to avoid misuse through such technical loopholes. - Attracting links vs. buying them
Other difference is towards link building approach which is heavily relied upon for organic SEO. White hat service providers will always research and try to find what the major industry websites, forums, communities, discussion boards and blogs etc look for in a firm’s website to link to your site and built up incoming links. Whereas the black hat operators will buy links, farm links, indulge in reciprocal link schemes without focusing on enriching the site for long term benefits.
