SEO Freelancers Need to Take Care With Complying With Clients

If you have been working in the field of search engine optimization for a while, there is a pretty good chance that you are familiar with some of the habits of smart internet searchers, particularly those who know how to get straight to the point. A perfect example would be when someone inputs "company name - review" or "company name - sucks." This is the sign of someone who wants to see the ugly stuff right off the bat; t and it is a sensible practice.

Let's say a self-employed SEO professional deliberately optimizes and promotes a blog post, which on the surface appears to include a negative review of her services, on her own website. Once the page starts to rank, searchers who are looking for negative reviews will likely click on that result; however, once they start reading the review, they realize that it is actually a refutation and explanation of why the review should not be trusted. In other words, the SEO professional in question lured the searcher and delivered the opposite, and she used her own website to do so.

The scenario above would be an example of bait and switch, which is certainly a black hat SEO tactic and not very ethical. Nonetheless, it is based on a real situation that transpired between a British SEO freelancer and a local business owner from her city. The two had a disagreement over SEO work completed for about $1,000 that the business owner refused to pay. He was later taken to claims court by the SEO professional, who ended up recovering about half of the amount minus legal fees, but there was retaliation involved.

The SEO professional noticed that the aggrieved client resorted to post negative reviews on Google Maps, a platform that is now competing against the likes of Yelp and other websites that enable reviewing of local businesses. She took the most successful blog post that she had produced for the client and hosted it on her own website along with the negative reviews. She added explanations about what transpired; plus, she also linked to her numerous positive reviews elsewhere. In the end, we can clearly label this as black hat SEO, but the justification is there. For more information click here https://www.reddit.com/r/SEO/comments/lypvoi/ifyouaregoodatseowouldyouoptimizeapage/.