A simple keyword search of ‘SEO companies’ brings out link upon link of SEO companies across the world all promising almost the same thing – to get your company’s website to the top most page of a search engine results page. If every company is promising the moon, how is one meant to distinguish and judge which Chicago SEO company one should work with?
Fortunately, there are a few key tests that can really help weed out the bad apples from the good.
Characteristics of Bad SEO companies
1. Companies that promise the moon on a silver platter
To someone who does not know the ins and outs of search engines, they might be easily taken in by this one. For the shrewd who know that no one can make such a claim because of the nature of search engines, they will easily be able to know the companies that will do their best to deliver on their promises and those that are just speaking sweet nothings in order to get business.
2. Poor Portfolios
Fair and fine, not every company can have Coca Cola as a client but having one or two big names that are easily recognizable in their portfolio will boost confidence in their services. Be wary of SEO companies that have no previous clients or a company that has one or two past clients but is promising to deliver a number one Google ranking for your company website.
3. Make Use of Black Hat Practice
In the SEO industry there are practices known as black and white hat practices. Black hat practices involve cutting corners to increase traffic numbers and so forth. Results can be achieved in a shorter period of time than when using the proper white hat channel. However, when search engines discover this malpractice, they penalize the website that has done this and it ends up taking a whole lot longer to recover from this knock down and can subsequently mean a loss of traffic.
Don’t just take an SEO company’s word for it, this is why it is also important to see what other companies this SEO company has worked with before or who are still clients. Larger NPOs or Fortune 500 company websites cannot afford to have their websites’ reputation discredited because of black hat practices, hence if you can see a large well known company on a particular SEO company’s client list, then one can almost be certain that this particular Chicago SEO company means what it says and sticks to only white hat practices.
Source:
Chicago SEO Company | White Hat SEO Services
Fortunately, there are a few key tests that can really help weed out the bad apples from the good.
Characteristics of Bad SEO companies
1. Companies that promise the moon on a silver platter
To someone who does not know the ins and outs of search engines, they might be easily taken in by this one. For the shrewd who know that no one can make such a claim because of the nature of search engines, they will easily be able to know the companies that will do their best to deliver on their promises and those that are just speaking sweet nothings in order to get business.
2. Poor Portfolios
Fair and fine, not every company can have Coca Cola as a client but having one or two big names that are easily recognizable in their portfolio will boost confidence in their services. Be wary of SEO companies that have no previous clients or a company that has one or two past clients but is promising to deliver a number one Google ranking for your company website.
3. Make Use of Black Hat Practice
In the SEO industry there are practices known as black and white hat practices. Black hat practices involve cutting corners to increase traffic numbers and so forth. Results can be achieved in a shorter period of time than when using the proper white hat channel. However, when search engines discover this malpractice, they penalize the website that has done this and it ends up taking a whole lot longer to recover from this knock down and can subsequently mean a loss of traffic.
Don’t just take an SEO company’s word for it, this is why it is also important to see what other companies this SEO company has worked with before or who are still clients. Larger NPOs or Fortune 500 company websites cannot afford to have their websites’ reputation discredited because of black hat practices, hence if you can see a large well known company on a particular SEO company’s client list, then one can almost be certain that this particular Chicago SEO company means what it says and sticks to only white hat practices.
Source:
Chicago SEO Company | White Hat SEO Services
