SEO is a term that can terrify and bewilder some business owners – it’s a confusing concept for even the most tech-savvy of us and a great deal of businesses will look to outsource their work to a dedicated SEO agency rather than doing it in-house.

Often, business owners will be confronted with a wall of jargon and confusing technical processes, most of which will be taken as gospel truth. Link building, in particular, comes under this category – it’s time-consuming and relates to algorithms which alienate all but the trained.

However, it’s worth staying vigilant whilst trying to find a company to undertake your SEO work. Whilst most SEO companies are highly reputable, the fact is that the SEO world has a few ‘dark’ practises (referred to as ‘blackhat’ in the industry) to improve rankings. Link building is particularly susceptible to some dodgy practises. Here a few pointers as what you should be looking for in a good link building campaign, and what to avoid.

One of the key aspects search engines take into consideration when ranking a site is ‘popularity’. As time dictates it would be nigh-on impossible for a company such as Google to individually survey internet users on what they enjoy, this tends to be ranked via links to a site.

So just go out and gather all the links you can, right? Wrong. Google and other search engines are up on that sort of practise and, as such, links are assigned quality. This basically means that a link from a website already deemed ‘popular’ and of high quality by search engines, rather than a link from a blog full of ads and spam. On the whole, most SEO companies will base their link building strategies around getting your site links from these reputable sources via engaging content and customer engagement.

Of course, these sites are difficult to get links from, so most SEOs will use techniques such as article and directory submissions to gain some guaranteed links. Whilst not great quality (and also suffering at the hands of Google updates), a good quality article or well targeted directory submission (i.e a directory relevant to your business) still provides a link that counts towards pushing your ranking up.

Any SEO company that offers you paid links should be avoided at all costs. Paid links involve offering sites a fee in order to post a link to your site, creating an artificial impression of popularity. Occasionally this kind of link, and links from ‘link farms’, can help bump your ranking up. Get caught however, and you’ll soon find your site plummeting down the rankings faster than you can say ‘blackhat’. The risk involved in using these kinds of links far outweighs any potential benefit for SEO.

Given the shady nature of these practises, most SEO companies who use ‘blackhat’ techniques won’t advertise that fact. You can bet they have used them before however; research any company you’re considering outsourcing SEO to and be on the lookout for any signs of dodgy tactics.

SEO is undoubtedly one of the most powerful weapons in the digital marketing arsenal, and should be at the forefront of any business’ online strategy. However, don’t get confused by the smoke and mirrors created by technical jargon. With even a basic grasp of SEO, finding one of the many fantastic and reputable agencies and avoiding the shadier ones should be easy.

Ben Greenwood is writing on behalf of Fluid Creativity, specialists in SEO and Web Design

Ben Greenwood is writing on behalf of Fluid Creativity (http://www.fluidcreativity.co.uk), specialists in SEO and Web Design

Author Bio: Ben Greenwood is writing on behalf of Fluid Creativity, specialists in SEO and Web Design

Category: Marketing
Keywords: SEO, web design