Bad SEO or ‘Black Hat SEO’ includes a variety of optimisation techniques that would eventually be detrimental to your search engine rankings. In the worst cases, a complete removal of a website from major search engines could take place.
The most recognised 'Black Hat' techniques include the use of:

Keyword overuse (spamming)
Keyword specific doorway or gateway pages
Unpopular keywords
Cloaked and/or redirected pages
Link swap farms
Hidden text and/or links
Unrelated links
Duplicated content
...and a host of other search engine UNfriendly tactics.

Most ‘Black Hat SEO’ consultants make huge amounts of money. This is due to the fact that it takes a relatively small amount of time and energy to over-optimise customer web pages, using the listed techniques.
Of course unpopular keywords are rarely searched and receive virtually no visitors or sales. Keyword stuffed doorway pages are worse still as eventually the customers’ website suffers negative results in the search engines in ways that are sometimes irreversible, including permanent exclusion.

By the time this all becomes apparent to the client the unscrupulous SEO consultant has received payment and already moved on to the next unwary victim.

Good SEO or Clever SEO as we like to call it requires a carefully planned structure and strategy to achieve desired results. There are NO shortcuts; this structure will take time to formulate as it requires days of dedicated competitor, client and keyword analysis. Once a strategy is decided then even more time is spent implementing this into a client’s web presence as an initial set-up.

Actual website optimisation should be considered an ongoing process, which continues to improve the clients’ web presence continually month by month. A good SEO solution will normally include a minimal 9 or 12 month contract after set-up, with an option to renew at the end of the contract period. The monthly optimisation is used to improve on each previous month’s performance by following the websites’ original structure and strategy during set-up.
In other words, a constant flow of freshly optimised sub pages, web content, hyper links and external content is added each month to maintain and improve results.

3E Tip: : : Choose your Web Marketing company wisely. The best are NEVER the cheapest, but this should not deter you from choosing the best company available. For example, spending £100 pounds with a poor SEO company will almost always achieve nothing in terms of relevant site traffic and actual sales conversions. Spending £1000 with a good SEO company will improve traffic and sales conversions above and beyond the money spent, therefore making the expensive price tag totally worthwhile.


3rd October 2006 - 3E Marketing Director - Peter Shacolas