Unfortunately, when an unprofessional SEO employs grey or black hat techniques, it is you that has to endure the consequences. This appears to have happened to US retailer, JCPenney, which was severely penalised by Google when it was discovered they (or their SEO company) had engaged in spammy link building. You must continue to monitor your website; it is relatively easy to spot things like keyword stuffing – after all, how many times does “best woolen mittens in the UK” have to come up in one paragraph? But there are a few more sly tricks to be aware of:

Multiple websites. SEO is a continually evolving field; it used to be quite acceptable, and even smart, to invest in multiple websites. Today, you might establish sites that are related for strategic purposes, or you may have different websites for different purposes. A few years ago, it was fine to have dozens or more websites that simply hosted a copy of your main website’s content. They would be indexed separately and help boost your ranking. The problem, though, is that this will now cause issues with duplicate content, which can be heavily penalised by Google. If you are going to have multiple websites, fine. They just need to have their own separate identities and purposes.

Multiple domains. When it became obvious that having multiple sites with the same content was going to work, these black hat SEOs made minor changes so the sites appeared to be different. The wording may be slightly different; the layout may be slightly different; but they’re not really fooling anyone, least of all the search algorithms.

Doorway pages. Another formerly white hat tactic was to create doorway pages. These are bait for search engines. They are indexed and ranked by search engines, but real, live visitors never actually see them. Instead, the doorway page immediately leads them to a landing page, which is not as optimally optimised, as it were. This is essentially bait, and it is not going to reflect favorably on your company.

Take the time to monitor you own site, even if you know your SEO provider is honest and trustworthy. If they are, then you’ll spend some time getting to know your site better. And if they’re not, you can quickly give them the boot.

• Make sure that your keyword/phrase in your title. Now the trick here is not to repeat the same keyword phrase for every title on your site. If possible, supplement the keyword with relevant wording. For example, if your keyword is “leather shoes,” you might title a page, “leather shoes on sale.” You don’t want to repeat this throughout the site because it dilutes the strength but you can try a few variations, such as “shop our leather shoe sale at LeatherShoes.com” or “leather shoe sale at LeatherShoes.com.” Two or so variations are sufficient.
• Put your keyword within the first 25 words of a post. You want a density of between 2 and 5 percent, so sprinkle them in the beginning, middle, and end. Clustering them looks like spam to Google – and to readers.
• Optimise your external and internal links. This is becoming less important, but make sure anchor text contains your keyword(s).
• Use your URL. www.leathershoes/leather-shoe-sale. This is especially important for sites with archived content. You may also want to categorise your keywords. For example: leather shoes/patent leather shoes or leather shoes/blue leather shoes.
• Use your header. Buy quality leather shoes at a discount. You have your keyword and some qualifiers to fill in information.
• Make sure your titles, headers, and content are well-written. Poorly written content sends a big SPAM signal to readers and to Google and other search engines.

The ranking game is all about keywords; when you use them well, you position yourself much more advantageously to win.

• Email marketing was the clear favorite in terms of marketing channels. The majority (87 percent) favored this platform.
• Number two was search engine optimisation, with 65 percent of social professionals opting to employ these strategies for success. Online ads were further down the list with about a third of marketers using this channel.
• B2B marketers tend to be more active with SEO than B2Cs, but that gap is closing.
• Most (68 percent) say they are going to boost their SEO efforts. Last year, that figure was 71 percent, so that is a bit of a decline. However, only 9 percent said they have no plans to use SEO.
• Less than half of marketers are planning to increase PPC advertising spent.
• Facebook is number 1. No surprise there; 92 percent of marketers use this platform. Way, way down on the list at number 6 is Google+, which is used by about 40 percent of those surveyed. Google can be heartened, though, because a majority of those surveyed say they plan on intensifying Google+ efforts in the future.
• Social bookmarking/news sites and forums decreased in popularity, and photo sharing sites like Pinterest gained steam.

The real takeaway here is not that SEO is great and forums are not; it is that savvy social media marketers utilise a variety of channels to reach their audiences. Audiences are not sitting in front of their televisions or reading the daily newspaper anymore; they are spread out among Facebook, Pinterest, YouTube, search engines…there is no one-size-fits-all approach; rather, you have to make use of the channels that make sense for your target audience.

Why?
Because the 301 redirect indicates that your site has moved permanently, you obviously want to use it when…your site moves permanently! It is useful when you move to a new domain, when visitors typically access your site via a different URL (it sends them to your preferred URL), or if you are merging two websites.

301s are also essential in terms of SEO. Moving to a new domain can completely wipe out any traction you have made in the search engine results pages.

How?
If you love intricate, difficult, mind-boggling code that separates you from the mere mortal, creating 301 redirects is going to bore you to tears. Luckily, though, that means those of us who are usually mind-boggled at code can do it with relative ease. Here are the steps for those using Unix servers:
• Download your .htaccess file to edit. When a specific page is requested, this file provides instructions that you may wish to include, such as redirection or security issues. If you do not have an .htaccess file, create one by opening notepad, naming and saving the file as .htaccess
• Once you have your .htaccess file ready, enter this code using the indicated spacing:

Redirect 301 /OldPage.html http://newname.com/NewPage.html

• Save the file.
• Upload your newly edited .htaccess file to the root folder of your server. Your web hosting company may have a utility that allows you to do this easily, or you can use File Transfer Protocol.
• Test the redirect. Type the old address into the page you’ve changed; you should be taken to your new location.
Not too tedious, and the work is worth it when visitors are seamlessly moved to your current site and you lose none of your SEO advantage.

The tone and voice with which you communicate with an audience also varies: here’s a Facebook status from Skittles: “Skittle carrier pigeons: good idea, or the best idea?” This hits their target audience and is bright, funny, and best of all, short. What will work with your audience?
• Create a content calendar. What type of content do you need to produce? Do you need to highlight specific promotions? Do you have special holiday sales or deals? Is there an industry conference or event around which you should post content? Create a calendar that lays out all important dates, content-wise. Then plan for the days for which nothing is upcoming. What type of content can you produce? A how-to list? Tips for your readers? A video? Have content in place; you can still be flexible, but you have a plan in case winging it turns out to be harder than you thought.
• Optimise. Don’t forget your keywords! You can still optimise your profiles, Abouts, and status updates. Do not overdo it – people can tell and they will run away. But slip them in when appropriate.
• Have a Plan B. What do you do if someone posts a nasty comment? What do you do if there’s a problem? What do you do if this snowballs and one comment becomes ten, which becomes twenty…. With social, there is risk, but you can mitigate damage by anticipating what could go wrong and having a plan to address it. Negative comments are the most common, and these need to be addressed immediately. Sometimes a simple, “We’re sorry. PM us with your details and we’ll sort this out,” is incredibly effective in reaching an angry customer – and showing the rest of your community that you care, are proactive, and are willing to acknowledge fault (when appropriate).
Make the most of the incredible opportunity provided by social media; there has never been a more effective way to reach an enormous and enormously diverse audience. Don’t depend on the muse to write your social media content – have a plan.

• Check every detail; if there is a physical address listed on the website, check Google Maps to make sure that it is real; call the phone number, do a reverse lookup. When you call, does someone answer or does a service or voice mail box pick up? If you don’t get a human, move on.
• Look at the testimonials. Don’t look for “This is the best company EVER!” Look for contact information, and then do the contacting. If they do not have any information listed, cross that one off the list.
• Check how long the company has been in business.
• Scour forums for mentions of the SEO companies. When people have bad experiences, they are often very eager to share them. On the flip side, disgruntled people may leave false negatives, but you can at least get a sense of their reputation.
• Check with police agencies. If they have reports of fraud, they may be willing to share them to prevent further crime.
• Does this company have a blog? Read through and see what they have to say about SEO: do they sound knowledgeable? Do they provide good tips?
• Does the company offer a money-back guarantee? This is good. Does the company guarantee top ten rankings? That’s not good. No one can guarantee top spots, and it is a big red flag if they do.
• Read, reread, and read the contract again. If you can, have a lawyer scour the agreement.

If something doesn’t seem right to you, do not select this SEO company. There are scores of legitimate, high value companies that can benefit your business immensely, but there are also those weasels that can cause penalties, low rankings, and a damaged reputation.