I have recently been talking to website development professionals who have told me that most of their experiences of Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) firms and individuals have been based purely on black-hat techniques. It takes a well-educated website development professional to actually distinguish and judge the techniques used. Educated professionals also understand they cannot attempt to offer Search Engine Marketing (SEM) services without investing a large amount of resources into the service.

Today I started work on a client’s website for a SEO focused project. From my initial findings, I have seen that their previous person (a self proclaimed SEO expert) used an automated SEO program. One of these programs where you enter the website address and it provides you with recommendations to how you can attempt to cheat the Search Engines and increase your rankings.

I could see that this program had been used around 15 times in the previous month, so it certainly highlighted that the previous SEO person had a strong reliance on it. Initially I was shocked that someone has been offering SEM services to respectable businesses and has carried out techniques that could get a businesses website banned. It concerns me that these Cowboys exist and do not care about their customer’s websites.

Over optimisation is something that the Search Engines see and then downgrade a website for the terms that have been over-optimised. My client’s website has been moving down the Google rankings over time, and I fear that this has been because of automated SEO techniques used externally.

These types of automated programs are developed and marketed to serve the desires of the "I want to quickly get online and become rich" generation. Over time, the changes directed by this type of application can show Google and the other Search Engines that you are trying to cheat your way up the rankings.

I do not know how long the effects on my client’s website will last from the use of these tools. I am hoping my visitor focused improvements that compliment the Search Engines will show Google that my client’s website is no longer trying to cheat its Search Engine positioning and that it deserves a higher ranking.

I have always said that automation is important in any business; I try to automate any repetitive task that I complete. Although I would only automate tasks that I understand how to do manually and could do so, but through automation I can speed up. A simple example of this is when your login details for a website are stored, you could type it in, but thankfully your Internet Browser remembers your details so you don’t have to enter them in every time.

I suppose the line is very fine, if you do not understand the full picture you can easily be swayed into using the wrong techniques. Some people may call a White Hat SEO technique Grey, or even Black. Who decides what is right, wrong, and which label it should fall under. The Search Engines certainly cannot judge because they are open to a certain level of abuse due to the mammoth task they undertake with indexing the whole of the Internet.

It comes down to the Individual to set their own standards, judge what is acceptable and what could get a website banned from Google when a human editor reviews it. I prefer to look after my clients interests online they make money from their online business, and so do I.

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