Crucial Considerations Regarding Proper, White Hat SEO and Its Cost

What recourse do you have if a rouge SEO company uses black hat tricks to propel your site, or your new client's website, to the top of the SERPs, only to have the site penalized by Google? Unfortunately, you have very little recourse, unless you can prove the SEO company wanted the site to get a penalty in order to ruin the business.

Wouldn't it be nice if there were SEO police that enforced white hat SEO regulations on SEO companies so everyone was on a level playing field? Obviously, police is too strong a term. Perhaps we could have white hat standards, and any SEO firm that used the white hat seal had to abide by the standards set by a voluntary body. At least consumers would know what to look for, since many do not understand the finer points of optimization.

It's hard to justify a price to a client for link building services and other SEO services when their previous SEO company charges one-quarter of the price because they were buying links and content from overseas companies. The client knows that they were penalized, but they remember being at the top of the SERPS as well. They don't realize that you have to work twice as hard to remove the bad links than you do to earn good links.

Seeing a client victimized by an unethical SEO firm before hiring your firm can make you feel bad, however, they probably got the work done at a bargain basement price. You get what you pay for with SEO, in most cases. Unfortunately, unless you know SEO, you won't know what to look for in an SEO company. If you run an SEO business, watch out for clients penalized because of the work done by a previous SEO firm. You need extra money for all of the extra work, both onsite and offsite.