Minimizing Your SEO Risk

Any search engine tactic or campaign carries with it a certain amount of risk. Changes to your keyword strategies, website design and link building can greatly increase your web traffic and search engine ranking. But if you follow the wrong path, a major change can end up decreasing your traffic. Sometimes, you have no idea which outcome you’ll get until you take the risk.

Not taking risks with SEO, however, leaves your website and ranking positions stagnating and slowly eroding as newer, more relevant websites gain traction with search engines. Since you have to take some risks, the secret is learning how to calculate your risk factor.

High-Risk SEO Tactics

Any SEO strategy which risks the wrath of Google should be avoided. These are the so-called “black hat” SEO tactics, designed for rapid SEO increases by tricking the search engines. Cloaking, keyword stuffing, link farming and similar strategies fall into the “black hat” category.

Don’t get me wrong—black hat tactics can greatly increase your SEO results, but only if you don’t get caught. Google’s increasingly complicated algorithms almost ensure you will, at some point, get caught.

Once Google identifies such tactics, they will penalize your website, dropping you so far down the search results that no one will ever find you. Or, if you’ve really messed up, Google will simply ban you, which effectively erases your website from public view.

How do you identify high-risk SEO tactics? Read Google’s Webmaster Guidelines and Terms of Service carefully. If either of these documents explicitly forbids what you’re about to do, then stop, because it’s not worth the risk!

Identifying Acceptable Risks

An acceptable SEO risk has the potential to either increase or decrease your SEO rankings, but doesn’t arouse the wrath of Google. Any strategy recommended by the Google Webmaster Guidelines is a risk worth taking.

• ·       Before implementing any new SEO strategy, ask yourself the following questions:
• ·       Will the change improve how users find and use your website?
• ·       Will the change make it easier for search engines to understand the content of your site?
• ·       Will the change make it easier (without violating Google’s SEO rules) for search engines to spider you site?

If you’re confident answering these questions with “yes,” it’s probably worth taking the risk.

Should You Hire Outside Help?

Outsourcing SEO is a touchy subject. Some businesses prefer to hand the entire responsibility over to an SEO company, while others cringe at the idea of relinquishing control.

As with any business partnership, the outcome of SEO outsourcing depends largely on due diligence. Let’s say you have a choice between two New Yorkweb design & marketing firms. On the surface, they seem to offer the same service.

Digging a little deeper, however, you discover that websites served by Firm A have multiple examples of plagiarism, poorly-written content and keyword stuffing. Firm B, however, provides well-written original content and uses keywords with both readers and search engines in mind. It’s pretty obvious which partnership would put your online reputation at risk!

Adrienne Erin is a blogger and SEO professional who loves sharing what she learns about the field with others online.