When you search for an SEO company to work with your law firm, you will no doubt find many businesses that offer broad promises for a cheap price. These are often the black hat SEO companies. A black hat SEO often exists to scam unknowing business owners with shady digital marketing practices and erroneous results.

Where Does “Black Hat SEO” Come From?

The black hat term comes from westerns, where the antagonist wore a black hat. Computer science circles have taken the phrase as a referral to virus creators, computer hackers, and other digital experts who practice unethical actions. When you are looking for law firm digital marketing, it is imperative that you watch for signs of Black Hat SEO. If the company is egregious enough, it may get your website removed from online search.

How Does Black Hat SEO Harm You?

It may seem like anything goes in the world of digital marketing, but Google and other search engines have strict guidelines on how to work within their system. The Google Webmaster Guidelines explicitly denounce practices like:

  • Hidden Links or Hidden Text
  • Automated Google Queries
  • Creating Pages with Duplicate Content
  • Creating Pages with Trojans, Viruses, and Other Malware
  • Keyword Stuffing

This list does not include a black hat SEO’s scope of actions. These practices are done solely to improve a website’s ranking on a search engine. The law firm content that comes from a black hat SEO company is not content that would be valuable to a visitor. Because Google, Bing, and other search engines want to make sure people keep using their services, the engineers make it a point to build scripts that identify websites ranking up from Black Hat SEO practices and take them down.

What SEO Practices are Best?

You had to undergo years of intense study and review to obtain the ability to practice as an attorney. In the world of SEO, the majority of practices that promise fast results with little effort often turn on you in the long term. To learn more about how to create meaningful content for your law firm SEO, contact us at Market My Market for a consultation.