Out of Fashion: Black Hat Marketing Strategies

It's time to clean out your closet. Those black hat SEO strategies are not only woefully out of date - they are hurting your page rank and your traffic.

 

What are "black hat" SEO strategies? Basically, it is any search engine optimization strategy that uses deception or misdirection to trick sites like Google and increase your traffic.

 

Why are black hat marketing strategies so harmful to your website? The new search engine update, Google Panda, now allows Google to pinpoint many black hat strategies and dock the sites that use them. In addition, future search engine algorithm updates will also likely target those "cheating" with black hat marketing tactics.

 

So, what pieces in your lawyer website design closet need to go? Here are the biggest black hat fashion faux pas:

 

• Keyword stuffing. Having too many keywords on a page is now a red flag for Google. It's okay to incorporate keywords, but keep the writing natural.

• Link farming. Any backlink is a good backlink, right? Wrong. Focus on organic linking from related websites with high PageRanks, and avoid taking the easy way out with paid spamdexing and other shady linking practices.

• Content stealing. Sure, the article might be great, but it belongs to someone else. Also, Google will recognize duplicate content and penalize you.

• Cloaking. Why would you show the Google spiders one thing and show your readers another? This is a deceptive practice that is punished by the Panda.

 

What is in for the post-Panda season? White hat SEO techniques, of course. To learn more about what your attorney website should be doing, contact the marketing experts at Foster today. Begin by giving us a call at 1.888.886.0939.