The Startup Requirement

Last week, I worked with a UK based IT Consultancy called BlackGrid Solutions and helped them create an awesome looking logo design. Located in Hove, East Sussex, BlackGrid Solutions is an IT consultancy company, specialising in software development in the financial sector. The client wanted a clean, modern and crisp looking brand for the new startup.

Since the company was new, we did not get much information in terms of the brand values, philosophy or even positioning strategy. The client was actually working on these items. Ideally we like to work with clients who had already some of this home work so that the design we come up with are more relevant, impactful and align with the vision of the company. However, in this case, since the client came highly recommended, we decided to pitch in do a little bit of the brand value clarity work ourselves. This required us to conduct a focus group study of the stake holders. We sent the client our Brand Value Clarity worksheet to complete. This worksheet asks questions whose answers would give us an insight into the value proposition of the company.

Research & Brainstorming

For startups it is very critical to start the branding process with understanding the value proposition of the company and to anchor that to a story. Stories are important in successful branding and creating the story is half the battle. With out a story to anchor the brand, the company would find it really hard to engage it’s audience and create the right kind of impact and brand recall. These stories could be based on the core values, how the startup came into being in the first place, mythology and more.

As we researched the UK IT Consultancy market segment, we came to the conclusion that a web 2.0 looking design would work well with the emerging market trends of this sector. Most of the direct competition had simple text base logos and hence we felt that a nice iconic treatment would work well to set the client apart. The competitors that did have icons looked quite dated.

So we set out to research and brainstorm ideas that would describe attributes such as geometric shapes, connecting dots, grid images, super imposing, stacking and other ideas that would hint abstractly at the tech and IT nature of the business and at the same time bring the message of service, quality, dedication, passion and commitment to the forefront. After several days of research and sketching, we came up with a bunch of design concepts that reflected these attributes and more.

The Challenge

The challenge with creating an IT Consultancy logo design is that the market is saturated and almost every conceivable design angle would have already been explored or used. To create a unique design that not only aligns with the company’s vision and core values but also look pleasing and stack up against the client’s expectations requires skills, talent, experience and above all a deep insight into branding principles. At Logo Design Works, we believe we posses these attributes and have demonstrated this by creating winning logo designs time and again.

The Result

When the client reviewed the design concepts, he immediately honed in on the final design you see above, with out hesitation. After a couple of minor tweaks and color variations, the design was finalised and we moved on to creating the rest of the brand identity which included matching stationery design.

The post Creating An IT Consultancy Logo Design appeared first on Logo Design Works UK.

Start up companies and for that matter companies that have already been established often fail to see the relation between proper branding and visual identity and the results they have on their bottom line. I do not say this because I run an online logo design company but rather because of facts and research that is available out there.

8 times of 10, my experience when conversing with a potential client, we tend to spend a lot of time discussing why the budget for getting a logo design is so high, relatively speaking, and why they should invest that on their company brand identity. It starts with the premise that the client does need a logo design or brand identity and are looking to get this done in the least amount of money possible.

I do understand that budgeting for a small business, especially one that is in its infancy, is a very critical aspect and the business owner needs to keep an eye on it to ensure proper cash flow. However, a company’s logo design is the first step in building a robust business. It has the power to create the right impression – the fist time and every time. A great logo leads the way to great branding which in turn influence every aspect of the business – right from the visual to the emotional and beyond. And you can not get this effect by going for unprofessional options or by crowdsourcing your logo.

If you look at any of the big brands in the market, you will notice that most of the noise they generate around their marketing campaigns is based on visual stories and brand impact. They spend untold amounts of pounds trying to sear their logo and brand into our subconscious. Of course every great brand has to be backed by a great service or product. Assuming you have a great product or service, your brand is next in the line of assets that you could use to influence your target market.

The Budget Farce

When I am not designing logos and brand identities, I spend time helping small businesses with business development and sales increase. I consult with both big and small companies and try to provide an insight into effective methods and campaigns that could help increase their revenues. During this exercise, I always look at the budget the business has set aside for various things. This gives me an insight into the priorities of the company and the likely hood of success or failure.

Most often than not, I find that logo design and branding is at the bottom of the list with the least percentage of the budget allocated. In case you are wondering – no, I do not make these businesses spend money with us. In fact these businesses are already our clients. The amount allocated to the logo is sometimes less than the bill for the drinks at the launch party. I am not kidding. Another time, I saw the budget for the fancy business cards the client got printed was double that of the logo design. Now, don’t get me wrong. You definitely need premium cards to create the right impression since your business card is your hand shake. But the logo and branding on that card would speak volumes about your company. Much more than the quality of the card stock. But you got to treat your brand like a person and invest accordingly.

I think it is a psychological barrier. Spending money on design – which does not appear to really do any thing other than make you look good – seems to be a “waste”. That is how our brain processes this activity. It is not considered an “investment” but rather an “expense”.

The Opportunity Cost

When you spend less than you can afford to on your brand identity, you may be saving a few bucks but you are incurring a huge opportunity cost. An opportunity cost is defined as the following according to Investopedia:

So, when you decide to invest less on your branding, your opportunity cost may not be visible right away and in monetary terms. But it would have a deriding and detrimental effect on the amount of money you make because of the lost opportunity of creating the right kind of impression on your potential clients.

A great example of an opportunity cost that could lead to loss of revenue is pricing. It has been proven beyond a doubt that better branding presentation and presence can lead to high pricing of your service or product. Of course pricing is depending on a number of factors but having a professional and awesome image is one of the factors.

I worked with a client a while back who was charging around £25 per hour for her copywriting services. Her old logo was her name in simple Ariel font and as a consequence her website did not have an inspired branding about it. Once we create a stunning looking logo, she then went on to update her website to reflect the new brand which in turn boosted her confidence to actually raise her prices and almost doubled them. The effect of a the “brand” gave her confidence to charge more. And her clients were willing to the pay the new rates with out batting an eye lid.

I agree that this is not always possible and would depend on market conditions, competition and the nature of the product or service, but this is just one example of an opportunity cost.

Cliched Anecdotes

I know this is a cliched anecdote but I can not help mention it here. Consider you are going to an interview. You are highly talented and have the required experience and skills to back that up. However, would you not agree that the way you present yourself, your dressing and the way you talk plays a HUGE part in wether you are going to snag the job or not.

Another example is when you are going to a dinner party. You need to dress the part to make an impression at the party and be considered seriously. If you are nodding your head sideways and thinking that you are not the type of person who would try to impress people at a dinner party then I must say that you are going to find it tough to develop your business. Because the principle is very important to consider even if you personally would not be inclined to think that way.

For more reasons on why you should not cheap out on your branding, read this article.

Let me know your thoughts and experiences with this by commenting below. Have you seen any benefits or the lack of from your branding efforts? Do you consider branding a waster of money at the very least, an expense?

The post Can Your Logo Design Effect Your Bottom line? appeared first on Logo Design Works UK.

A brand can have such a strong sense of identity that it’s almost possible to think of them as people. And why not? After all, a good brand has his own personality. He has his own voice and relationships. And once he’s out in the open, he can grow in some pretty unpredictable ways.

If you like the idea of your brand being his own, unique person, I’ve got a few tips so you can make it happen:

Figure out Who He Is

Most people go through adolescence on a quest for identity and self-discovery, and you should do the same thing for your brand. Without a sense of self, your brand is going to wind up a generic, contradictory mess. He won’t know who he’s speaking to and why they should care, and he won’t be able to make his customers happy because he doesn’t know why they keep him around in the first place.

Solidify your brand’s identity and define what he is and what he means to his customers. You might have to change outfits a few times and see which one fits, but it’ll all be worth it once he starts attracting the right kind of attention.

Give Him a Voice

The way we speak can define us just as much (if not more) than the way we look. Letting your brand express himself in his own unique way can set him apart from his competitors, making his messages that much more interesting and appealing. You can do this with the tone of your advertisements, picking the logo design or right mascot, or even how you word your website.

It’s not just the way your brand talks, either. It’s also what he says that makes a big difference. Try to tailor your brand’s message so that what he and the customer find valuable match up.

Introduce Him to New Friends

Even brands need friends. In marketing speak this is called cross-marketing. Partner your brand up with other related brands and have them work together on something. Maybe you can both participate in the same raffle or contest, with the both of you contributing prizes. Or maybe you can tie up with a media company and do some product placement in a show or movie. Your brand can also sponsor an event (or maybe even launch its own) in support of a worthy cause.

The point is, your brand shouldn’t stand apart from the rest of the world like a loner. Shoo him out of his room and let him circulate with the outside world! Just remember to make him pick his friends carefully. Just like with real people, hooking up with the wrong friends can be very bad for his health.

Let Him Make Mistakes

Your brand won’t get everything right his first time out; not even on his second. Your brand will stumble and fail as he tries to figure his audience out and make a meaningful connection to his customers. Let him. If he (and you) can learn from and adapt to these mistakes as they happen, then you’ll all be better off for it—even your customers.

The post How to Treat Your Brand like a Person appeared first on Logo Design Works UK.

Crowdsourcing is sometimes seen as a cost-effective way of getting your brand a good logo design, but in reality it’s one of the worst things you can do for your brand.

Crowdsourcing involves inviting multiple designers to send in logos for you to review. You sift through all the choices and then pay for the design closest to what you want. On the surface it sounds deceptively simple and straightforward; in reality, however, it complicates matters far more than if you had just hired a single contractor in the first place.

Poor Quality Designs

Business owners don’t realize that a public call for designs involves sifting through a lot of sub-standard submissions. An open competition means even inexperienced, unskilled designers will be jumping in and muddying up the waters with bland, off-message work. You’ll have to leaf through dozens of entries just to find the one or two gems in all the dross. Your time is too valuable to put up with that sort of thing.

No Designer Relationship

A designer is much like a doctor. Sure, you can drop in and consult on a one-off basis, but for him to be really effective he has to get to know you and become familiar your habits, lifestyle, and goals. That’s how designers are able to come up with great logos that are spot-on with your message and help you develop your brand image over time. They stick around to see if a treatment works, and help you to tweak it if it doesn’t. Crowdsourced designers just slap on a band-aid, give you a couple of aspirin, and ask for your money without seeing if their diagnosis works.

No Collaboration

One of the key advantages of having a single designer creating multiple design studies for you to choose from is that you can mix and match. Like the colour of one design, but the font of another? The designer can mesh the two together and come up with your ideal logo. Crowdsource designers, however, are highly competitive and will not cooperate to produce a better design. Neither are they going to be willing to lift elements from competing designs, because that would be a violation of the other designer’s copyright.

Unethical

Crowdsourced logo design projects have a bad reputation among designers because it involves large amounts of work with no guarantee of compensation (also called “spec work”). This is a bad investment for freelancers, who are paid per hour and will most likely lose money on the deal. Think about it: if you were a chef, would you cook a meal for someone who would only pay you if they decided yours was better than those of fifteen other chefs? Not likely!

It Cheapens Your Brand

A crowdsourced logo competition might be able to help a smaller business with a limited budget, but it will do more harm than good for larger brands. It tells customers that you don’t value your brand enough to properly invest in professional talent. It tells the design community that you don’t value their work enough to adequately compensate professionals for their work.

What’s your stand on crowdsourced design competitions? Do you think they’re good for business, or not?

The post Why Crowdsourcing Your Brand’s Logo is a Bad Idea appeared first on Logo Design Works UK.

If you’re going to improve your website’s search engine ranking and usability, you have to know what you need to improve. Many digital marketing and SEO agencies have access to web statistics tools, which can tell you how your site is performing and what customers are looking for when they search online. But you don’t have to hire an agency to be able to find that information yourself. There are many effective but affordable tools for hands-on business owners. I’ve listed a few of them below:

AWStats

Most web statistics tools require you to add a script (a few lines of code) to your website in order to capture information. While this process is easy enough for web developers, DIY entrepreneurs may find it a little intimidating. AWStats, however, is installed on your server, and not on the website. All you need to do is contact your web host and ask for them to install the necessary codes.

CrazyEgg

Have you ever wondered how visitors use your site?  Which areas are the most popular and which get ignored? CrazyEgg is an innovative behavior tracking service that can get you that information. It uses “hot spots” to indicate the most clicked-on and viewed areas of a specific webpage, and how far people scroll down before giving up. You’ll then be able to tweak your site’s layout so that the most important information is more visible, which will help improve the customer experience.

Google Analytics

This is the most common and famous web analytics tool by far, and with good reason. Google Analytics is directly tied to the most popular search engine in the world today, and offers comprehensive statistics such as keyword rankings, unique visitors, bounce rates, and more—all presented in easy-to-read graphs and charts. There is some controversy lately about Google hiding the keyword search statistics of registered Google users, but we have yet to see how Google addresses this concern.

GoStats

GoStats is unique among web statistics tools in that it actually predicts future web traffic based on previous performance. This is great for planning out marketing campaigns or posting important updates (for example, advertising a sale on your website right when you reach your peak number of visitors in a quarter).

Reinvigorate

Web stat tools offer a lot of information, so much that it can be difficult to sift through them all without your eyes glazing over. Reinvigorate knows this, and presents information in attractive, readable layouts. It’s not just a pretty face, either. Reinvigorate updates in real-time, so you don’t have to wait for your reports to be sent at the end of a day, week, or month. A feature called “Snoop” even notifies you the minute you get a visitor, sale, or signup, so you can take immediate action and contact the prospect or customer.

Sitemeter

Used by popular websites such as Lifehacker, Gawker, and Gizmodo, SiteMeter offers you ridiculously comprehensive amounts of information. It offers pretty much every report you can think of, including heat tracking (like that of CrazyEgg) and up-to-the minute stats. Reports can be granularized in multiple ways, such as entry pages, exit pages, locations, and even who is currently on your website at that very minute.

With all these free (or close to it) web stat tools available, business owners and marketers have no excuse for ignorance.  Go load up on site statistics and let the website tweaking begin!

The post 6 Affordable Tools to Check Your Website Stats appeared first on Logo Design Works UK.

Contests are a great sales and marketing tool. Not only because they’re good for the brand, but because they’re good for the customer.

Customers love having the chance to win those big prizes—it’s the same thrill they get when playing the lottery or gambling, but with less social stigma and guilt involved. This is because (depending on the mechanics) they’re not just buying a paper ticket—they’re buying a product that they’re actually going to use, and a chance for greater rewards beyond that. Even if the customer doesn’t win, they’ve still gotten a neat product out of the exchange.

Brands get the better end of the deal by far. Well-run contests manage to do multiple things at once, all of which are extremely beneficial to the brand:

Promote a New Product

Successful contests can give new product lines a much-needed marketing boost. You can tailor the contest mechanics such that customers are required to either purchase or review a new product for a certain amount of points or entries. You can also have the new product as a part of your prizes, too.

If you want to involve your customers in the product creation process, you can have them compete to name the new product, much like Doritos and Starbucks have done. This is a great way of engaging the community and driving interest before the product is even formally launched.

Reward Loyal Customers

Contests are a great way to recognize and celebrate loyal customers. You could, for example, reward the customer who has the best story about how the product changed their lives. Or you could judge photos of the product in action. Customers won’t hesitate to tell people about a product they love and they are smart about it. Throw a prize on top of it, and you’ll be drowning in customer appreciation.

Attract Fresh Interest

A non-customer cannot become a repeat customer unless they try the product in the first place. Purchase- or review-based contest mechanics help break down a person’s initial resistance to trying out new things. This is because their attention is focused on the prize; the new product is a necessary step to winning, so they don’t think as much about purchasing it.

Increased Brand Presence

The more people enter a contest and start talking about it, the faster and farther your brand name will travel. You’ll be able to grow your brand’s presence by word of mouth alone as people recruit more of their friends to participate, especially if your contest counts “shares” and referrals as points. This is even better than traditional advertising, because you are doing relatively little of the actual work. You set the machine in motion, but it’s the participants themselves that are promoting your brand for you.

Gather Customer Data

This is perhaps one of the most valuable benefits to doing a contest. If you can gather sign-up information during the contest, you will be able to build a fresh database full of accurate, up-to-date data on your customers and their behaviors. And these customers have already demonstrated an interest in your brand by joining the contest, so they’re going to be warm leads.

Have you held a contest recently? What benefits did you get? What feedback have you gotten from your customers regarding the event?

The post Charge up Your Brand with Contests appeared first on Logo Design Works UK.

It is normal for businesses to want to save money on brand design, but skimping can end up costing more than investing in a truly professional design service. This is especially true if your business is in a transitional period and is developing or revamping its brand identity. At that stage, you want your marketing materials to be of high quality in order to maximize interest and increase visibility.

But even if your business is not at such a sensitive stage, skimping on brand design can have some very real drawbacks:

Low Quality Work

“You get what you pay for.” This saying is as true in brand design as it is anywhere else. Whether it’s because of the designer’s low skill, small project scope, or minimal effort, you’re not likely to get good quality work if you insist on spending peanuts.

Low Priority Status

Most freelancers are very good about giving each client equal importance, no matter their budget. But when push comes to shove and the freelancer has to choose between two priority projects, then they are more likely to do the higher paying one first. It’s a purely business-driven decision, and you would do the same thing in their place. Especially if the smaller project is much more complex than it’s actually worth (which many negotiated small-budget projects are).

Unprofessional Brand Designers

I’ll say it straight out: hiring your relative, friend, or casual acquaintance to do your brand design or branding your website for free (or close to it) is a bad idea. They may be cheap, but chances are they don’t have the skills and equipment to do your brand justice. And more often than not, the freelancers who are willing to work for dirt cheap are either too inexperienced or too unskilled to command a higher price. Even on-staff brand designers are subject to this rule. Fresh grads and low-skill brand designers will probably be the only ones willing to work full time for low rates. Not people to whom you want to entrust your branding.

Disjointed Marketing Materials

Purchasing your marketing materials one at a time and from different (cheap) brand designers will inevitably lead to conflicting designs and imagery. This will make your brand campaign scattered and disjointed, and confuse customers about your brand’s characteristic “look”. You could try to police the designs by supplying brand guidelines and micromanaging the designer’s output, but involves a lot of effort and is poor use of your time. A good brand designer hired over an entire campaign would be able to create materials with consistent designs that properly express your brand message.

Short-term vs Long-term

It all boils down to a decision between short-term benefits and long-term gains. In the short term, you save money on the initial purchase and get exactly what you pay for (if you’re lucky). In the long term, you develop a strong relationship with a brand designer who will know you, your business, and your customers in greater detail and be in a better position to develop great marketing materials.

When you put it side by side like that, the long term gains from investing in a good brand designer from a decent marketing agency far outweigh the short term “earnings” from skimping on a purchased design. If you invest in an on-staff designer, they may even be able to grow into the role and function as a marketing or brand manager in a couple of years’ time, bringing much more value to the company than they would as a contractor.

The post 5 Reasons Not to Cheap Out on Brand Design appeared first on Logo Design Works UK.

It’s perfectly normal for companies to seek outside help for their marketing. Internal marketing departments are usually short-staffed and don’t have the resources to pull off really big projects and campaigns. Dedicated agencies can provide this, as well as expertise on modern marketing trends and tactics.

But like anything involving your brand, you have to be careful who you pair up with. Some agencies will be an “okay” fit, others will be terrible. But if you can find a marketing agency you can trust, the experience will be incredibly satisfying.

1. Relevant Experience

Take a look at the agency’s past customers. Are they in a similar field to yours? Do they have the same audience, or have a familiar message? Rate your agencies based on their experience in your industry. Specializing on big name car brands is all very impressive, but it doesn’t do you any good when you’re trying to sell dairy products.

2. Multi-faceted Marketing

Great marketers don’t stick to one approach when promoting a product. They’ve got a variety of tricks and tactics to promote their clients, and know how to use them effectively. They also know which types of clients and industries are more suited to certain types of marketing promotions. This kind of flexibility is perfect for your company, so you can reach the maximum number of people without seeming too redundant.

3. They Do their Homework 

Think back to the agency’s pitch from when you first met. How prepared were they? Did they know your company and its product well? Or did they stumble through it making wrong assumptions? Do they come prepared during meetings?

If the answer is “yes”, then you’ve probably got a winner. They’re more likely to bring this level of preparation and professionalism to your marketing campaigns and events, which will greatly increase your chances of success.

4. Responsive

This trait depends a lot on how you work. Do you prefer someone who keeps you in the loop all the time, and gives you updates unprompted? Or would you rather they leave you to your work and only communicate when there’s something significant, or whenever you ask for information? Good agencies will tailor their response times to their customers, and adapt to how you want to do business.

5. Modern Tools and Methods

It’s critical for marketers to keep up with their audiences. New media such as social networking, the Internet, and mobile marketing pop up and fade away all the time, and a great marketing agency will be quick to understand the pros and cons of each; when to adopt it and when to drop it like a hot potato.

6. Questions, Lots of Questions

Smart marketers never assume they know everything. Even if they have long experience in an industry, a client will always have qualities that make them unique from everyone else. Your agency should be digging for information, for stories or scraps of trivial knowledge that will be the key to building your next big brand or marketing campaign.

7. They Take the Long View

A good agency will never sacrifice the long-term health of your brand for a short-term gain. They will eschew tactics like black hat SEO techniques, fire sales on luxury brands, and sponsorship deals with flash-in-the-pan celebrities who don’t fit your brand. They want to build you a brand that will last a lifetime.

8. Transparent

You want an agency that won’t hesitate to give you bad news. Not because they want to, but because you need to know. These are the agencies that have your welfare in mind, and not that of their company. They know that you need to be armed with up-to-date information if you’re to succeed, and that covering up bad news will only do you harm.

Have you found a marketing agency you can trust? What did they do to win you over? Share your stories in the comments below!

The post 8 Signs You Can Trust Your Marketing Agency appeared first on Logo Design Works UK.

Today’s commercial environment is a lot different from how it was half a century or even a couple of decades ago. A new generation of customers has taken prominence, whose shopping habits have even affected the older generation. They are now using new technologies that have changed the way we interact with our customers, for better or worse. Customers are a lot smarter in their shopping habits, and no longer connect with generic advertisements and heavy-handed marketing strategies.

Customers Tune Out Noise

In addition to traditional forms of media like radio, print, and radio, customers now have access to the Internet, smartphones, and other forms of digital communication. This has ramped up the noise level to the point that customers have to tune out messages, or risk being overwhelmed by the deluge of information. Traditionally broadcast one-way marketing communications have a harder time getting through, just because customers are now more selective about what they pay attention to.

To compensate, businesses have to learn to create more compelling and eye-catching content, and to learn how to use the various communications channels effectively. Email marketing, for example, is strongly associated with spammers and con artists and can easily turn into over marketing. And yet there are email marketing campaigns that do cut through the chaff, and make it through to an interested customer. They accomplish this by being aware of the customer’s prejudices against email, and working to stand out by sending out well-crafted content that the customer will find attractive and valuable. You have to learn the rules of your chosen medium if you want your message to stand out.

More Customers Are Doing Their Research

The days of customers being spoon-fed information are over. With all this access to information, customers are now taking the initiative and reading up on your products and those of your competitors. They are educating themselves on issues surrounding your product, and making informed choices on which product will be right for them.

Not every customer is doing this of course, but enough of them are making a big difference in the way we market. We have to be ready to supply them with the information they’re looking for. Content marketing is an excellent way to satisfy your customers’ craving for information. In addition to giving them information they need to make an informed purchase, it also cements you as a thought leader in your industry. Also, being impartial in your content marketing increases your stock with customers, as it shows that you’re more concerned about them than you are with shilling your product.

Customers are More Vocal

Thanks to new communication mediums, customers now have more direct access to businesses and a greater voice when talking to fellow consumers. If the customer was diligent enough, they’d be able to send feedback straight to a company president or CEO, or express their views of a product to thousands of people at a time. This wider reach can be a positive or a negative, depending on how the business reacts.

Vocal customers are a godsend. They are freely giving you information that your marketing and sales team would kill for. It would be foolish not to act on it. This is especially true if the feedback is negative. Very rarely do you get to know why customers are unhappy. More often than not, the average consumer would just stop using your brand and not tell you way. Treat every customer communication like the golden opportunity that it is. If you can win them over, they will turn into your strongest advocates.

Customer behavior is changing, and that means your business has to change to. You are not losing opportunities, but rather gaining new ones. If you can move with your customers and deliver what they find important—information, engagement, and value—then you’ll be well-placed to succeed in the modern business age.

The post How Customers are Getting Smarter appeared first on Logo Design Works UK.

The Internet is saturated with online businesses, each scrabbling for higher search engine rankings in order to draw in more customers. When faced with such stiff competition, the dark side of SEO can be very tempting. Black hat SEO techniques promise quick results for comparatively little effort. You can even hire people to do it for you, if you want to keep your hands “clean” and disavow knowledge that these shady strategies were done with your knowledge.

It’s a temptation that you have to fight if you want your business to last and to thrive in the online marketplace. While there are very real positives to black hat SEO, there are far more negatives—and big ones at that.

The Effects Don’t Last

Although black hat techniques like keyword spamming and link farming can shoot your rankings up in fairly short order, they’re unlikely to bring you any higher in the long run just like with over marketing. That is because these techniques are relying on “fixed” sources to work. For example, if a website wants to increase a link farm’s effectiveness, the owner has to set up another link farm to do it. And so on and so forth, adding farm after farm, and spending more.

A site grown organically, on the other hand, increases in ranking over time by building relationships with real websites. These “genuine links” count higher towards a website’s search score than fake links (and yes, search engines can tell the difference). Other white hat techniques bring genuine traffic that increases your rankings and, more importantly, helps deliver more sales.

Black Hat Techniques are Unreliable

Many think they’re clever when they’re using black hat techniques—that they’ve found a sneaky way to get ahead of both their competitors and the search engine companies. In reality, search engine companies are way ahead of the black hatters. Most, if not all, black hat techniques are already known, and search engines are programmed to detect and flag websites that use them. To combat keyword spamming, certain search engines are ordered not to read keywords at all, and instead rate a website based on other factors such as interlinking and content quality.

It’s Bad for the Customer

One of the ironclad criteria that search engine developers use when assessing a website (and determining if something is black hat or not) is the question, “Is this helping the visitor?”

Most black hat website SEO techniques are crass, ugly, and do nothing to improve a visitor’s experience. Some websites have almost a thousand words of text that is just an excuse to cram it full of keywords. It’s a pain to read, and few customers are going to want to do business with that kind of website. What’s the use of being easy to find when the website turns people off? You have to listen to your customer and tweak your SEO campaigns.

Harsh Penalties

Search engine companies hate black hat SEO with a vengeance. They have very strict rules about what constitutes a “good” website, and impose harsh penalties on people caught raising their search engine ranks via illegal methods. Most of them give you a grace period for you to get your website up to their standards, but noncompliance gets you removed from their search engine or, in extreme cases, shut down entirely.

As I mentioned, search engine companies already know most of the tricks. It’s not a matter of if they find you; it’s when.

So does black hat SEO still sound good to you?

The post Why You Should Stay Away from Black Hat SEO appeared first on Logo Design Works UK.