There is a reason I don’t have clients I work for plastered all over my site, or home page, even though it would probably help us make new sales.

There’s a reason I don’t take linkbacks from SEO clients from their site to boost my own sites ranking in Google even though I’m missing a big trick SEO companies use to rank their own sites. We only take linkbacks from web design clients and even then sometimes I nofollow it and usually today we use Hobo or Hobo-web as the linkback (purely because that direct link can mean sales if people like that site).There’s a reason we only host clients we design and build (or maintain) websites for, not linkbuild to, on our servers today.

There’s a reason you should never ever talk in public or private forums about getting SEO done on your site (unless it’s just that, onsite search engine optimisation).

That reason is Google. Google doesn’t owe you, or us as a bona-fide seo, anything. If Google decides you’re doing something that makes Google look stupid, you might be in trouble.

I can go on record as saying I have never bought a paid link in 3+ years for a client as Hobo (apart from Yahoo). I can consider myself white hat even if I don’t put much faith in ‘hats’, I don’t spam people’s sites, I don’t use any black hat techniques as it’s too risky for my clients. 99% of the time I think I stick to Google’s guidelines (maybe it’s actually a 100% for clients). I don’t make silly claims like guaranteed first page rankings although I usually get them with a lot of work and say it’ll take me a year. I’m not secretive which SEO techniques I use. It makes for some boring sales copy and crappy rankings for us sometimes let me tell you.

Why tell Google you are trying to manipulate their results, even if it is to make their index better (in your opinion lol)? Do you really want your logo on the site of a SEO company that Google identifies as breaking it’s terms and conditions (which change quite a lot these days)?

Don’t ever tell anyone you have a SEO on board. Don’t ever let a SEO company say they are fondling your results either. Ask your seo company why your seo company has a link  at the bottom of your pages, and determine for yourself the risks.

Sometimes it makes those top ten results seem a bit less, well, natural, doesn’t it (?), when someone else is telling Google they got you to number 1 for *whatever*

I may as well go on record as saying some White Hat Shock troops who say to this post “you must have something to hide” are frankly, Naive to think Google (indeed anybody) is looking after their interests – if I did have something to hide i wouldn’t post this tosh.

I just spotted a person talking on a forum about potentially hiring us. I just think that’s a bad idea that’s all, even if I am sticking to the rules.

In the end, each to his own, and maybe I should stop watching conspiracy movies and wearing tin foil over my napper

• I Spent A Year Adding Content & My Competitors Nicked My Rankings