The truth of it is that getting improved search engine ranking and sustaining the position can only be done ethically by the “white hat” SEO companies, or you can visit the dark side - the so called “black hat” brigade at your own risk. Take link building, for instance. Here’s a legitimate SEO technique that done properly, will stabilise and grow the popularity of a website as incoming links from relevant and respected websites are seen as a ‘vote on confidence’ in yours. It’s not unusual for a successful, well ranked website to have many thousands of links.

But what happens when your SEO suggests buying links? Or sourcing hundreds of new links from those so called link-farms? Reciprocal links are an excellent way of building popularity, but again, even this is open to abuse if only low ranking or rather tenuous links are sought from those other companies. In any case, weak search engine optimisation, or worse, SEO that cuts corners, will compromise results, overall ranking positions and in extreme cases, might even get you bounced from the search engines altogether.