In this short, Joshua Albanese, founder of Spearleaf, calls green flag or red flag on seven SEO practices. Internal linking, optimized titles and snippets, matching search intent and structured data are green flags; the meta keywords tag, cloaking and scaled thin content are red flags, and anything that violates Google's terms of service eventually gets caught. Those green flags are the basis of white hat SEO for local businesses.
Read the full guide: White Hat vs Black Hat SEO: What Gets a Business Penalized →
Video Transcript
If agency owners do this, is it a red flag or a green flag? Build complex internal linking and site architecture: green flag. Internal linking is literally the cornerstone of great SEO. Think of building your site like a wiki.
Using the meta keywords tag: red flag. That's like 2004. Nobody uses it anymore.
Using clear, optimized titles and snippets: oh man, green flag. Yeah, that's also one of the things that Google looks at the most. It creates the most amount of authority. If you're not optimizing it for the keyword of the page, then you're missing out in a big way.
Matching search intent and using language people search for: green flag. Obviously, that's going to make the biggest difference. Matching the language that your customer speaks makes them feel more trusted, and then Google looks at it as you're an authority, because you understand what the customer's actually wanting.
Cloaking: red flag. Anything that you're going to do that violates Google's terms of service is eventually going to get caught and penalized. Adding structured data: green flag all the way. It's really the cornerstone of what made Google be able to index all the websites, so it's just a really good practice to continue doing it.
Scaled thin content created only for search engines: red flag. It's obvious that thin content isn't going to work. It creates no authority, and Google just looks at it as a spam tactic. Follow for more SEO education!