MENUMENU
  • Services
    • Services
      • Search Engine Optimization
      • Local SEO
      • Generative Engine Optimization
      • Digital PR
      • Content Marketing
      • Email Marketing Services
      • Lifecycle Marketing
      • Paid Media Advertising
      • Social Media Marketing
      • Creative Design Services
      • Conversion Rate Optimization
      • Website Design & Development
      • Amazon Marketing Services
      • Franchise Marketing
      • Franchise Development
      • National to Local Marketing
      • Reporting and Data Analytics
      • Digital Marketing Strategy
  • Who We Serve
    • Who We Serve
      • Franchise Marketing
      • B2B Marketing
      • Lead Generation
      • Ecommerce
      • We Build Custom Strategies
      • View Sample Industries
  • About Us
    • About Ignite Visibility
      • Our Story
      • Our Values
      • Our Team
      • Clients
      • Diversity & Inclusion
      • Our Blog
      • Marketing Resources
      • Franchise Marketing Resources
      • Careers
      • Hiring Notice
  • Case Studies
  • Awards
  • Contact
  • 619.752.1955
Home / Google Penalties / How to Spot if Your SEO Company is Black Hat

How to Spot if Your SEO Company is Black Hat

June 26, 2015 By John Lincoln

Black hat SEO is when an SEO company uses strategies outside of Google’s guidelines. This is often really enticing for SEO companies because it is much easier to get rankings this way. However, the issue is, the rankings only last for the short term. After doing SEO for a good amount of time, I can tell you it is well worth the effort to build quality over time. Every corner you cut, catches up to you. That can be hard for a start up to swallow, as they want immediate results, but if you look at the clients who have been doing quality SEO since the beginning versus those who went the black hat route, the line of success is clear.

How to Spot if Your SEO Company is Black Hat
How to Spot if Your SEO Company is Black Hat

In this post, I show you how to tell if your company is doing black hat SEO.

Check your Backlinks

Most inexpensive SEO companies who are black hat will build a lot links really fast. What happens is, Google at first interprets this as a quality signal, but then you get a penalty. One of the first things you can do, is check a tool like Open Site Explorer, Majestic SEO or the Google Search Console Link Report. Each of these tools do pretty much the same thing, but I prefer Majestic.

Majestic SEO will show you any spikes in backlinks. If there is a major spike in links, you can investigate those links to see where they are coming from.

Majestic SEO

 

Here we see your options for looking at those links in Majestic SEO.

Majestic SEO Links

 

When looking at these links, use your own best judgement. Do these look like links that have been earned or links that are “unnatural“. One other thing you might want to do is take a look at the anchor text report. If your SEO company as built too many text links with a keyword in them, you could get a Penguin penalty and lose your ranking for that term.

Search Engine Land

Checking Onsite Optimization

The main issues with black hat SEO is that it generally occurs from building poor quality links to the website. However, there can also be onsite issues as well. For example, things like keyword stuffing, cloaking, spun content or doorway pages are common issues that fall into black hat category.

Keyword Stuffing

You will know this one when you see it. Here is an example provided by Google.

keyword-stuffing

Pretty nasty stuff, right?

Cloaking, Spun Content and Doorway Pages

I wont go too much into these, but briefly, you can check for cloaking by doing a fetch as Googlebot or checking the cached version of your page and see if it matches what you see. Also, spun content is just gibberish and it is easy to spot. Doorway pages are pages made for just SEO that really shouldn’t be there. Now, there is a big difference between category pages that provide value and doorway pages. Doorway pages provide no navigational value to the user and have limited, if any, unique content.

Rankings

Usually what will happen if your SEO company is doing black hat work is that you will see a good boost in the first 3 to 6 months and then start to lose traffic. It looks something like this.

Black Hat SEO

Now, it is not always that drastic. Sometimes it is much more gradual.

SEO Penalty

Usually, if poor quality content is being added to your site, odd sounding projects and a lot of links are being built, those are red flags. But the thing is, if you used a black hat SEO company in past and are now with a good one, they will need some time to reverse the bad work. It is very hard to bounce back when black hat techniques have been used on the website. Your new company should be talking about things like disavow files, link clean up, earning new links, inbound marketing and social media.

Panguin Tool and Manual Actions

Finally, if you want to see if you actually have a penalty, you can go to the Google Search Console and click on on the manual actions link. If it says you have a manual action in there, then you have one. Now, it gets a little trickier with your site if it is being held down by an algorithm change or update. For that situation, I recommend the Panguin Tool. It overlays your Google Analytics organic Google traffic on top of all the Google updates.

Panguin Tool

I like this tool a lot and recommend it often. But, watch out for seasonal or event based traffic spikes. This can really throw things off. One of the worst things that can happen in SEO is operating on a false premise. You can waste so much time and energy working on project. For example, consider that you think you were hit by Panda, but you were not. You could spend so much time consolidating URLs, moving to subdomains, trying to create more quality content, cleaning up filters, etc.

These are just some of the things I look at when assessing a penalty and black hat SEO. By the way, is your company doing black at social media?

Related Posts

  • How Black Hat SEO Companies Could Get Penalized by Google

    Over there last 15 years or so there have been many SEO companies who got…

  • Get Into Google News, Learn Google News SEO Now

    Google News is an important part of Google. Delivering over 6 billion website clicks per…

  • Tips for Google News Sites SEO

    Matt Cutt's Gives Tips for Google News Sites SEO Optimizing for Google news is different…

About John Lincoln

John Lincoln (MBA) is the CEO of Ignite Visibility, a top performance marketing agency backed by Mountaingate Capital. A digital marketing strategist and keynote speaker, Lincoln has managed over 1,000 marketing programs for brands like DoorDash, HBO, Tony Robbins, and Experian. Under his leadership, Ignite Visibility has been named a leading digital marketing agency in the U.S. and made the Inc. 5,000 list six times. Lincoln also spearheaded the development of CertaintyTech, a cutting-edge media mix modelling and forecasting platform. An award-winning marketer, Lincoln has authored three books, including Advolution (2022), and produced films such as SEO: The Movie. Recognized as a Top Business Leader, he has been featured in Forbes and The New York Times and spoken at global events like Web Summit and SMX. Lincoln's mission is to empower businesses through innovative digital strategies while reinvesting in clients, employees, and the community.

About Ignite

Ignite Visibility is a premier full-service digital marketing agency. We were founded in San Diego, CA but are now a 100% remote-first company with Igniters and clients around the globe.

Ignite Visibility is one of the highest awarded digital marketing agencies in the industry, works with some of the biggest brands in the world and is a 6x Inc. 5000 company.

noun-trading

Our Services

Ignite Visibility offers Award-Winning Services including comprehensive full-funnel digital marketing strategies. Learn more about our most popular service offerings below:

  • SEO Search Engine Optimization
  • PPC Pay Per Click
  • Email Marketing
  • Social Media
  • Creative
  • View All Services

Contact Us. Let’s Chat!

  • This field is hidden when viewing the form

Marketing Guides

SEO In 2020: How To Prepare For Major Disruption

"SEO: The Movie" - Have You Seen Our Film? Watch Now

"Social Media Marketing: The Movie" - Have You Seen Our Film? Watch Now

Amazon Seller Central vs Vendor Central

Listen To The Podcast Featuring The Best Minds In Marketing

John Lincoln Interviews Global Director of Digital Marketing & Strategy at Qualcomm, Jessica Jensen

Check Out 227 Free Online Marketing Classes

The 2020 Guide To Dominating SEO With Advanced Schema

Learn More About Our Digital Marketing Agency

Learn More About Our SEO Services

Learn More About Our Paid Media Services

SELECT CATEGORY

Become A Contributor

Interested in writing for Ignite Visibility?

APPLY NOW

noun-chat

Let's Chat

Ready to grow your online visibility and sales?

Request Your Free Proposal

Work With Us

NEWSLETTER // SIGN UP NOW










noun-strategy

Free Marketing Resources

  • Digital Marketing Resources
  • Marketing Strategy Videos
  • Weekly Marketing News Recaps
noun-strategy

Most Popular Blogs

  • How Long Does SEO Take?
  • Multi-Location SEO: Top Strategies
  • Google AI Overviews: Everything You Need to Know
  • Technical SEO 101
  • 18 Google Ad Extensions You Should Use
  • Complete Guide to Google Responsive Display Ads
  • Capitalizing on Local Service Ads
  • How SEO and PPC Work Together
  • Community Management Best Practices
  • B2B Social Media Marketing Guide
  • VIEW ALL BLOGS
noun-letter

Join Our Newsletter

CONNECT WITH US

  • facebook
  • twitter
  • instagram
  • youtube
  • linkedin

Services

  • Search Engine Optimization
  • Generative Engine Optimization
  • Pay Per Click Management
  • Social Media Marketing
  • Email Marketing
  • Conversion Rate Optimization
  • Website Design & Development
  • Creative Design
  • Content Marketing
  • Digital PR
  • Franchise Marketing
  • Digital Marketing Agency Services

About

  • Our Team
  • Our Values
  • Clients
  • Industry
  • Reviews
  • Careers
  • Marketing Resources
  • Privacy Policy & Service Terms
  • Advertising Disclosures
  • Sitemap

Contact

4370 La Jolla Village Drive
Suite 320
San Diego, California 92122

619.752.1955

Join The Newsletter

Sign up for our newsletter to get the latest from Ignite Visibility.











google parther logo

©2025 Ignite Visibility. All Rights Reserved. Privacy Policy and Terms of Service