In the old cowboy shows, like the Lone Ranger, it was easy to tell the good guys from the bad guys: good guys had white hats, and bad guys had black ones. In most parts of the real world, the good guys and bad guys are harder to tell apart – except in the Wild West which is the internet. Even in 2011, it’s still easy to tell the hard-working good guys whose websites earn high SEO ranking because of White Hat, organic SEO methods, and the “bad guys” looking to make a quick buck through so-called Black Hat SEO.

Google is a bit like the internet’s self-appointed sheriff, working hard to reward White Hat, organic SEO web page optimization methods and penalize the Black Hats. As you search for a reputable small business SEO company to help you with your organic SEO results, here are some things to watch out for to make sure your website isn’t falling prey to anyone wearing a black hat.

Don’t Stuff Keywords

“Keyword stuffing” is the practice of jamming in as many keywords as possible into a web page. Sheriff Google is on the lookout for keyword stuffing, and will penalize your website if it suspects that you might be using this Black Hat SEO technique. Instead, the keyword phrase you are optimizing for on a page should appear at a density of 1 – 2%, allowing the text to read naturally.

Avoid Link Farms

Link farms are automated sites that link to every other site in the farm. When the Inktomi search engine started using link popularity in 1999 as a key metric for SEO ranking, it didn’t look at WHO was linking to your site, just THAT you had links, so link farms were initially very effective. When Sheriff Google came along, however, it developed a PageRank system whose premise was that not every link was created equally. A link building campaign hinging on link farms, therefore, actually catapults sites not to the top, but to the bottom. Proper SEO link building relies upon links from relevant, trusted sites.

Don’t Pay for Search Engine Submissions

Some Black Hatters out there want you to pay for “inclusion in over 1,000 search engines”. First, 1,000 search engines do not even exist. There are three or four main search engines to care about, with the list starting with Google. Instead of falling for this ruse, invest in affordable SEO services that will lead to organic SEO results.

There are dozens of other Black Hat techniques out there that the uninitiated might be taken in by. If you do even just a little homework on the subject, you’ll easily be able to tell the difference between a legitimate SEO company and a fly-by-night villain. “Hi Ho, Silver!”