May 08 2012

If You Stay White Hat Then You Don’t Have to Fear Google’s Updates

Google went a little SEO update happy this past March, releasing 50 search quality tweaks. Google has also recently come out with some major algorithm updates, including the over optimization penalty and an attack on spammy blog networks. These are all quality updates following in the footsteps of the initial Panda update from last year that targeted article farms and sites that were heavily involved in article spinning.

When news of the over optimization penalty broke, a few of my clients wanted to know if their sites were at risk. Every time Google comes out with a major update, most site owners get a little nervous that their site is going to get caught in Google’s penalty net. It can take a long time to recover from a penalty, especially if you aren’t 100% sure where you went wrong, and losing massive amounts of traffic and search engine trust can quickly destroy an online business.

So what did I tell my SEO clients? Since I only engage in white hat SEO tactics (both onsite and for link building), these quality updates shouldn’t negatively impact their site. In theory they should actually help my clients! As low-quality sites (or even quality sites that were trying to cheat the system) are uncovered and penalized by Google, all the quality sites left should get a bump in the SERPS, increased online brand exposure and maybe even more new visitors!

I am constantly reminding my clients that as long as they stick with white hat SEO they have nothing to fear from Google’s updates. Since white hat SEO follows the best practice guidelines outlined by the search engines (it’s Google’s world and we have to play by their rules), white hat sites never engage in any kind of activities that might put their site at risk further down the road. At the end of the day, most of Google’s algorithm updates are about cleaning up the search results. They want to provide the best and most useful results to their users, so Google is committed to weeding out sites that can negatively impact the Google user experience. That’s why Google provides site owners with so much free information about white hat SEO – your good SEO efforts help them deliver a better product!

I know that black hat and grey hat SEO tactics can be very tempting for some site owners. It’s a much faster road to results, and since many businesses are currently focused on the short game most don’t want to wait the 6-9 months it might take for a white hat SEO campaign to start producing results. There are plenty of black hat sites out there that have managed to escape undetected by the quality updates thus far, which might make new site owners think they can sneak around Google as well. In my opinion it’s not worth the risk. Even if your site manages to escape penalty for a year or two, you have to live in constant fear that the next update could spell disaster for your online brand. When you stick to white hat SEO you know that each update is only going to ultimately help your site.

About the Author – Nick Stamoulis

Nick Stamoulis is the President of Brick Marketing (http://www.brickmarketing.com), a Boston SEO and white hat link building company. With nearly 13 years of SEO experience, Nick Stamoulis shares his knowledge by posting to the Brick Marketing Blog and publishing the Brick Marketing SEO Newsletter, read by over 150,000 opt-in subscribers.

Contact Nick Stamoulis at 781-999-1222 or nick@brickmarketing.com

7 Responses to “If You Stay White Hat Then You Don’t Have to Fear Google’s Updates”

  1. Thomas says:
    May 8, 2012 at 4:35 pm

    Ah Nick definitely not agreeing with you on this one!

    If you built great links but used your brand as an anchor you could get dinged for exact match anchor text!

    Now we are hearing that internal anchor text linking is bad….

    Over Optimizing your page titles is bad……

    And so on….so what Google gave tips on through Webmaster Central is now biting us in the ass.

    So hey…..forget SEO

    Long live PPC!!!!!!!!!

  2. Nick Stamoulis says:
    May 9, 2012 at 3:03 pm

    Hi Thomas,

    Thanks for reading and your comment :)

    As a follow up, I recently wrote another article that explains the differences between Google Panda and Google Penguin updates:
    http://www.brickmarketing.com/blog/panda-penguin-updates.htm

    Thanks again,
    Nick

  3. qizhenkim says:
    May 11, 2012 at 1:48 am

    This update let my ranking all off, it’s sad ah.

  4. Shekhar says:
    May 13, 2012 at 2:03 pm

    Whitehat has always been the key but it takes little time to succeed. With impatient people around, we are always going to have people using blackhat tricks to meet goals faster.

  5. John says:
    May 16, 2012 at 8:41 am

    Totally agree, Nick. Traffic for the websites we oversee, including our own, has seen nothing but gains throughout the recent changes. Shekhar is right that it takes time to succeed but it also stands the test of time. If you’re not doing anything wrong there’s nothing to penalize.

  6. Nancy says:
    May 23, 2012 at 6:05 am

    This is simply not true. Google does as they please regardless of following all their guidelines. I built a site for my small business and it was #1 for many years for the product I was making. When I retired in 2009 I continued building my site with instructions on how people could make their own. I never had huge traffic, averaging about 1000 a week, but that has dropped off the radar in the past two weeks. I did not build any backlinks, I have always had excellent, genuine backlinks. I put up a few affiliate pages for products related to my niche and do not use banners, but write my own articles about the products and their features and benefits. The site is 90% information with a few product pages. My traffic at last check was at 180 a week. I am doing nothing wrong, have received no warnings and update the pages regularly. I’m ready to let it close, I’m too old to keep up all this work for nothing. But the idea that people who have done nothing wrong can’t be hit is just not true.

  7. rchaffin says:
    May 23, 2012 at 9:04 am

    This post rings true to me as well. Several of my clients were asking if their sites were going to be impacted in a negative way as well. I have found that if you stay within the bounds of what Google says then you will not have to worry.

    Typically, if you are following White Hat tactics and they are still hit. You may need to see what other link building efforts they have done in the past that could be hurting them.

    Again, great post