[CQ Website Design]

Hello,

My client has paid someone to do the SEO on the website last year he is now rank 2 for certain keywords however the SEO looks like black hat SEO to me check it out here: http://gallaghermarq....com/index.html

I am re-designing the website for him should I re-do the SEO work to make it white hat? will he loose it rank 2 position?

Thanks

[MikeChipshop]

Sit the client down, make 'em a cuppa and explain.
If need be, take them to this site and let them see why black hat is a no no.

Open and honest is always the way forward.

[kingy da killa]

well if he dident get blacklisted by google, he may aswell keep the black hat seo right?

[Marc Roy]

I agree with the poster above. Tell your client that your work is based on what he wants. If he'd rather rank high for a short time through black hat SEO for quick profits, then go for it. If he's in for a long-term business, you tell him what you need to.

[arsebilisim]

CQ Website Design, on 18 August 2011 - 07:46 AM, said:

Hello,

My client has paid someone to do the SEO on the website last year he is now rank 2 for certain keywords however the SEO looks like black hat SEO to me check it out here: http://gallaghermarq....com/index.html

I am re-designing the website for him should I re-do the SEO work to make it white hat? will he loose it rank 2 position?

Thanks

I have checked the website. You better re design it and make sure that you are out of sand box. to check sand box try this tool: http://www.searcheng...box-checker.htm

[neil0wen]

What bits are you referring too?

To be honest, looking at the title tag and other bits, that you can't do much wrong.

This post has been edited by neil0wen: 18 August 2011 - 11:35 AM

[neil0wen]

There a few hundred people who search for marquee hire liverpool a month which is not that bad for a localised term.

However if you look at the sites competing with your client, they are not that great themselves. The top websites content is mostly bullet points, which is really bad for SEO and also have a very low amount of baclinks.

[CQ Website Design]

So it would be probally easy to get him rank 1 for that search term without using blackhat. The SEO on the website isnt great anyways. I will speak to them about it.

Thanks

This post has been edited by CQ Website Design: 18 August 2011 - 01:23 PM

[byronc]

what blackhat seo is used? If its just backlinking to the main url you wont lose relevance on that.
If you remove keywords from the main page that he is ranking for correctly you will lose something. If you change urls that he has backlinked, you will lose rthe affect of those backlinks.

Keep page names, make a nice design, use more h1 tags, keep orignal or improved text. job done.

[rallport]

kingy da killa, on 18 August 2011 - 09:11 AM, said:

well if he dident get blacklisted by google, he may aswell keep the black hat seo right?

Wrong - It's god awful advice like this that makes me lol at this section of the forum sometimes.

@OP: After a quick look over it I can't see too much wrong with the site, definately no huge blackhat techniques. Only thing I'd say that look amiss is the spammy titles tags that aren't helping anyone.

[kingy da killa]

rallport, on 19 August 2011 - 08:14 AM, said:

Wrong - It's god awful advice like this that makes me lol at this section of the forum sometimes.

@OP: After a quick look over it I can't see too much wrong with the site, definately no huge blackhat techniques. Only thing I'd say that look amiss is the spammy titles tags that aren't helping anyone.

i just figured if a black hat tehciqnue got him to rank 2, and he didden get banned for over a year... then its very unlikely he will and worth keeping if it ment good traffic.

im no seo exspert or anything thou ovsuily!

just makes sense to me

[MikeChipshop]

kingy da killa, on 19 August 2011 - 09:59 AM, said:

i just figured if a black hat tehciqnue got him to rank 2, and he didden get banned for over a year... then its very unlikely he will and worth keeping if it ment good traffic.

im no seo exspert or anything thou ovsuily!

just makes sense to me

Isn't it a bit like saying i haven't paid my taxes in over a year but i haven't been caught so it must be legal?

[kingy da killa]

i suppose it is.

i have now seen the error of my ways

[rallport]

At the end of the day, look at this like. Google has some of the the smartest people working for them, E.g. using a few shady blackhat techniques won't fool them. At some point, a dodgey technique that allows you gain an artificial increase in rankings will be squashed - it's just a matter of time. This is why people constantly refer to white hat SEO as a more long term solution.

[neil0wen]

rallport, on 19 August 2011 - 12:47 PM, said:

This is why people constantly refer to white hat SEO as a more long term solution.

Spot on! In fact I have heard of some bad link building practices that are the same, they buy high PR sites and use them to link to sites. Although this may work over the short term, eventually these sites will be banned or at very least lose their high PR and will not help the sites they are linked too!

[Jasa Pembuatan Web]

My God! blackhat SEO ?? hmmmm... I need more review from all of you. First see my screenshot below it about date registration of domain name.



as you know domain age just less then 3 months but visit this site : http://pelangsing-alami.com (one of the website I've developed for my client). Check the PR whole the entire site and what would you say?

I'm not do blackhat seo technique but why it happen I Don't know exactly. Can you explain about this mystery? cek this site as well (agenviagra[dot]com). the age of domain is same.

[neil0wen]

Jasa Pembuatan Web, on 19 August 2011 - 06:00 PM, said:

My God! blackhat SEO ?? hmmmm... I need more review from all of you. First see my screenshot below it about date registration of domain name.



as you know domain age just less then 3 months but visit this site : http://pelangsing-alami.com (one of the website I've developed for my client). Check the PR whole the entire site and what would you say?

I'm not do blackhat seo technique but why it happen I Don't know exactly. Can you explain about this mystery? cek this site as well (agenviagra[dot]com). the age of domain is same.

What's your point. Its only got a PR2?!

[roothost]

damn double post!

Attached File(s)

•  Image1.jpg (40.22K)
  Number of downloads: 5

This post has been edited by roothost: 20 August 2011 - 11:02 AM

[roothost]

The only 'frowned upon' technique I can see is the keyword spammy footer (see attached).

It's relatively easy to get a site to the top of google by using localised SEO (ie Marquee Hire Liverpool, or Marquee Hire Manchester)

The overall competition and searches is bound to be much lower so it is obviously going to be easier and quicker to rank for these 'long string keywords'.

I use this technique all the time, then build up to the more popular keywords.

[rallport]

Jasa Pembuatan Web, on 19 August 2011 - 06:00 PM, said:

My God! blackhat SEO ?? hmmmm... I need more review from all of you. First see my screenshot below it about date registration of domain name.



as you know domain age just less then 3 months but visit this site : http://pelangsing-alami.com (one of the website I've developed for my client). Check the PR whole the entire site and what would you say?

I'm not do blackhat seo technique but why it happen I Don't know exactly. Can you explain about this mystery? cek this site as well (agenviagra[dot]com). the age of domain is same.

Yes, you have a PR 4 within a pretty short space of time, great. Howveer, a high PR DOES NOT EQUAL good rankings in the serps - which your website proves

Also, lots of poor quality images, flashing gifs and adverts is no way to help with your CRO - which I imagine that site has lots of issues with.

Why do people fail to realise that SEO is two fold - getting visitors onto your site and ranking highly in the SERPs is only half of what SEO is. The other half is getting those visitors to actually convert into a sale (or whatever you measure this by). I had a rant about this a while ago on my blog - CRO and SEO – The Essential Realtionship

I see countless sites daily over optimized and appearing decently in the SERPs, only to have an awful website that fails to convert.

[Jason Dexter]

He isn't using any black hat techniques on his website, and I don't see why you should change the SEO if it's ranking.

Why not advertise the areas he covers? Makes common business sense to expand your target area and widen the net. In all fairness he is probably doing more harm then good at the moment by diluting the content and keywords.

It'll be interesting to see how people can sum up the difference between white and black hat SEO in a sentance

[Jasa Pembuatan Web]

rallport, on 20 August 2011 - 05:06 PM, said:

Yes, you have a PR 4 within a pretty short space of time, great. Howveer, a high PR DOES NOT EQUAL good rankings in the serps - which your website proves

Also, lots of poor quality images, flashing gifs and adverts is no way to help with your CRO - which I imagine that site has lots of issues with.

Why do people fail to realise that SEO is two fold - getting visitors onto your site and ranking highly in the SERPs is only half of what SEO is. The other half is getting those visitors to actually convert into a sale (or whatever you measure this by). I had a rant about this a while ago on my blog - CRO and SEO – The Essential Realtionship

I see countless sites daily over optimized and appearing decently in the SERPs, only to have an awful website that fails to convert.

The main keyword is "pelangsing" after that pelangsing alami and all in page 1 (google.co.id). regarding image in website that's order from my client. actually I really really don't like with the web that have a lot of animation image etc. but this is order from them. (Asian people like me love animtaion... hahaha)

[rallport]

Jasa Pembuatan Web, on 23 August 2011 - 02:22 AM, said:

The main keyword is "pelangsing" after that pelangsing alami and all in page 1 (google.co.id). regarding image in website that's order from my client. actually I really really don't like with the web that have a lot of animation image etc. but this is order from them. (Asian people like me love animtaion... hahaha)

What your conversion and bounce rates like? What the average visit length for your sites?

[ahughes3]

I think the original post has been highjacked by another topic.

CQ - There is nothing major wrong with this site (design aside) apart from over use of keywords. The links coming into the site aren't going to kill it, at worst they'll just be ignored if they are directory bulk links. It's certainly not worthy of being called a black hat site.

If it were me, I wouldn't panic about suddenly having to change everything. I would simply look at what needs to be improved, keep in mind your keyword usage, ensure you have your other on-page factors in place and transition the site to something that is more search engine safe. It won't damage the rankings.

Obviously if you change urls you'll need to ensure there are redirects in place but that's just commonsense right.

What is blackhat after all? It's just something that used to be whitehat till Google decided it was no longer acceptable!

Just as an example of what can happen:
I have a client who runs a limo hire business and has been using masses of "doorway pages" for the last 3-4 years. They are blatent, yet he's been ranking consistently high for years. Then Google started not to cache some pages on the site and the guy couldn't understand why. I explained the point about doorway pages. His answer was, my competitors are doing it and they are still ok, which again is a bit like saying "my neighbours don't pay taxes so why should I". Anyway, I explained to this guy that his site would start dropping in the rankings, more of his pages would not be cached and burying his head in the sand wouldn't solve the problem.

He decided he knew best and we parted company. 6 months later, he's back asking me to fix the problem.

At some point bad practice will get found out and it's better to make a smooth transition than have to panic fix and wait for Google to reinstate your site.