Clients often ask me, “Does Google try to make it difficult for SEO specialists to do their work?”

What I tell them is I don’t believe Google does anything to make it difficult for White Hat SEO specialists like me. A White Hat SEO specialist is someone who chooses to follow Google’s recommendations.

However, they make it very difficult for SEO specialists who use Black Hat techniques. People who use Black Hat techniques are those who look for ways to get lots of traffic quickly, even if it isn’t the right traffic. They are also looking for short term gains through temporary loopholes, rather than long term growth for their clients. In addition, they want to “automate” all the processes involved in securing high rankings.

I believe you can’t automate the key processes involved in developing good content for a website, such as text and photos. You must take the time to get to know the business, to know what makes them unique and best in their niche. You must become part of their marketing team and work hard to get into the head of their ideal customer.

Google has a large team of programmers that is always in the process of creating new algorithms to filter out websites that are utilizing strategies that violate Google’s Webmaster Quality Guidelines. These guidelines have been the same for years, and so there really is no excuse for SEO specialists to not follow them. They can’t say they didn’t know. You can’t trick Google and you shouldn’t want to.

On more than one occasion, we have helped a small business client get a refund from a major SEO company because the company used a strategy that was specifically stated as a violation in Google’s guidelines. Employment of this strategy caused the business to have the worst level of web traffic and sales in 35 years. Their SEO company literally tanked the website in the search results, and they tried to say they didn’t know it was wrong. They used the fact that Google didn’t catch up to them for several months as an excuse. In a meeting with them and the client, we pulled out Google’s quality guidelines and other Google public documentation and they knew the game was up. They allowed the client to cancel their service and gave them a refund.

Over the years, our clients have outperformed their competition in search rankings and new sales from online marketing because we’ve helped prevent them from doing spammy things. Google spells out in their quality guidelines that they will penalize those spammy things. While there have been short episodes during which our clients’ competitors were securing higher rankings by using spammy strategies, their reputation ends up so ruined that they had to let go of their domain names and completely rebuild their websites.

Once the reputation of a domain name has been damaged, it takes a human at Google to remove the penalty. Google won’t do that unless you humbly admit you’ve made a mistake, you call out the specific details of the violation, you provide evidence that you’ve remedied the violation,, and you promise never to let it happen again. Even then, Google is under no obligation to tell the business that their website has been penalized or to lift the penalty.

We’ve had several clients come to us after another SEO company has done something spammy and caused their website to be penalized. We are happy that we have been successful in getting penalties removed for these clients’ websites. These clients then go on to become some of our best clients because they have learned the value of following quality guidelines and they support our efforts to do so.

While I know that Google is in the search business to make money, I believe that their quality guidelines are in the best interest of internet users and of businesses that market through the internet. Other SEO experts might try to call me overly optimistic and naïve. However, I can point to over 20 years in the industry, and my adherence to quality guidelines has always benefited my clients and my small business.

Even when I’m pressured to follow the latest loophole, I stand firm and ask my clients to wait out the latest Black Hat strategy. I’m proud of the success of those clients that have done this time and time again. They’ve survived downturns in the economy and the short-term loss in rankings that happened when competitors were temporarily leading in search rankings due to Black Hat SEO strategies.

We love seeing that our clients are getting the right results for consistently doing the right thing over the long run. It’s rewarding to see that the good guys win!