Ep.69 - Google Is Catching Black Hat SEO Faster Than Ever

Google has black hat SEO operators on the run—and that is great news for law firms that are doing things the right way.

In this episode, I explain why the growing panic across black hat SEO forums should serve as an immediate warning to law firm owners. Websites using manipulative SEO tactics are reporting significant traffic losses, disappearing rankings, and, in some cases, complete de-indexing.

The biggest problem is that your SEO agency will not be the one Google penalizes. Your law firm, your reputation, and your ability to attract new clients will pay the price.

I discuss why even a mixture of white hat and black hat tactics can put your website at risk, what law firm owners should be watching for, and why a regular SEO audit is no longer optional. I also explain why now is the time to question suspicious tactics, hold your agency accountable, and remove anything that could threaten your long-term visibility.

Google’s algorithms will only become more effective. It is far better to identify and correct a problem before Google catches it for you.

Want to learn more about how our agency can help your law firm grow? Speak with John Rizvi ☎️

Transcript

John Rizvi 0:02

Hi, and welcome. I'm John Rizve, the Law Firm Growth Professor. For my new listeners, I'm pleased you came to join me today. For my returning listeners, it's always great to have you. In my podcast, I share the strategies for growth that have worked for me in growing my law firm from a startup with just me, a laptop, and a cell phone operating out of a spare bedroom to where we are today, a team of 60 professionals generating over $10 million a year in revenues from our 10,000 square foot headquarters in Crow Springs. An interesting thing has happened in the last week or two. All of a sudden, the chatter on Black Hat SEO websites and message boards has gotten overwhelmingly bad and even panicky. Now you might be thinking, okay, black hat SEO, we've talked about that. We know it's bad. So isn't this a good thing that people are talking about it? I think it absolutely is. But it also means that if your website is doing any black hat SEO at this time, you need to stop immediately. Now we've already gone through some of the warning signs and how you can tell that your SEO agency may not be entirely on the up and up when it comes to delivering the content you've asked for. And we've talked about some of the sneaky ways that they get around the prohibitions against Black Hat SEO. Well, they're not getting around it anymore. And the reason why is because Google has rolled out a new algorithm and a new AI system that's getting better at picking out Black Hat SEO and penalizing it on the spot. With, and here's the important part, less downside for those who are doing it right. And this is great news. There are websites that are reporting anywhere from a 10 to 15% drop in average site traffic to complete delisting, total de-indexing, and even blacklisting. Wonderful. We like that when it happens to Black Hat SEO. But if your SEO agency is using black hat SEO tactics on your websites, this is a real and immediate problem for you. And it's going to become a bigger problem very quickly if it isn't there already. One of the advantages of the new Google regime is that it's not improperly penalizing companies, firms, websites, or anyone that's doing it right nearly as much as they used to. There used to be a lot more false positives. And if someone is caught in a false positive for whatever reason, you have more ways to appeal that penalty today that you've received and to try to get it fixed. So again, I think this is great news. The reason I'm emphasizing this point so heavily is because a lot of SEO agencies still use a mixture of white hat and black hat SEO, and they try to sneak it in under the radar, or they think, well, if I just do it one time, it's not going to matter. That's not true. Very, very definitely not true, especially according to the traffic that I've been seeing on these black hat uh SEO websites. Now you may be wondering, John, you're really big on white hat SEO. You've made it very plain that that's the line you won't cross, and you work very hard to stay on the right side of it. Why then are you hanging out on black hat SEO websites? Well, the answer is to fight the enemy properly, you have to understand them. When it comes, this comes back to the art of war. Uh the and you know thy enemy and know thyself. I'm sure we've all heard that, read it, and had it introduced to us in law school, if nowhere else. Know your enemy, know what you're dealing with, and know how to effectively combat it. So it's important to me as someone who's interested uh in and helping lawyers with their SEO and helping my own law firm do better uh on search engines. I need to know what the black hat uh operators are talking about and what they're doing. I need to know what they're excited about, what they're worried about. The fact that they're so worried right now, the fact that they're seeing such a huge downturn in dividends from their SEO, it actually is a good thing. In fact, I feel like it's a great thing for those of us who want to do things the right way. That's why this is important, and that's why it matters. And that's why I make it a point to go into those places and find out what the latest black hat tactics are so that I can figure out workarounds for them in a white hat way that benefits my clients, benefits my own law firm. Uh, in fact, I saw a couple of posts on one of the Reddit boards from a Black Hat SEO, and they were talking about uh how their revenue stream has suddenly dropped 50% literally overnight. On the one hand, I say good, because if you were really serious about delivering results for your clients instead of delivering money to your bank account, you wouldn't be doing black hat SEO in the first place. You'd be more interested in long-term, organic, sustainable results. But of course, that's part and parcel of engaging in black hat SEO. There's no feasible way to do it in an organic, sustainable way. That, by definition, is what makes it black hat SEO. You're trying to game the system and get quick results by any means necessary. Well, now the system is fighting back and biting back, which is good. We want that. Where this becomes a problem is for people who don't know what their SEO agencies are doing. They don't know if they're doing black hat SEO and they don't care. As long as they're getting results and they're consistently on top of uh Google, they're not worried about it. Yes, AI overviews and so forth have been an ongoing problem with getting to organic search, but by and large, we've been able to somewhat ignore that until now. But at this point, we can't afford to ignore pure black hat SEO or a mixture of black hat and white hat SEO, because anytime that comes into play, your law firm's website is immediately in jeopardy of being demoted at best, or de-indexed or delisted, or outright blacklisted at worst. You don't want that. And more importantly, you can't afford that, especially not if you're a law firm that is scaled to the point where you have millions of dollars in revenue coming in and you've got hundreds of people relying on that site, staying up and staying either where it is or climbing the rankings. So this is a good time to go back and take a look at some of my other podcasts about Black Hat SEO. You can do a search for them and look for the warning signs on your own website. See if you can spot them for yourself. And if you can, uh, that's more than a good chance that Google already has. Uh, and if it hasn't penalized your site yet, the penalties are coming. So this is not something you want to sleep on, and it's not something you want to ignore and just hope it goes away. And it's certainly not something that can be solved by a stern phone call to your current SEO agency to say, hey, fix this, because they should have already fixed it. They shouldn't have done it in the first place. Uh, they know it's not good, and they should already know that it's going to get you penalized in the long term. Remember, the big problem with Black Hat SEO is that when it's executed, the agency who did it is not the one who's going to pay for it. You, your law firm, and ultimately the clients you want and the ones that need your expertise and skills, they're the ones that are going to pay for it. And we don't want that. So if you see even an indication that there may be black hat SEO uh happening on your website, you need to get in front of that. Uh you need to make sure it stops now. Fix it by whatever means necessary, or you will not have uh a client next month or the uh week after that, or next week, even, whatever your time frame is, because Google is going to catch the Black Hat SEO. It's better if you catch it first. Uh, and if you're lucky enough that your site's not delisted, then get it taken care of. Second, there's a lot more ways for you to appeal a ruling to Google and get it corrected now. This is great news for you as well. And it's great news for your law firm and for your Google rankings. The Black Hat uh are not gonna care. Uh, they're fine with saying, okay, this is a hiccup, blah, blah, blah, and they'll go on tomorrow, and you won't, and they believe they don't have to worry about it because they're not looking long term. So the trend after 20 plus years of Google fighting against improper rankings and unwarranted high rankings is that they are finally getting down to a point where the black hat SEO operators are really starting to pay attention because they have to. Why are they paying attention? Because it's hitting their bottom line. The people who have been doing it white hat, who've been doing it right all along, they already know this. They've probably already been burnt. So they're not surprised that the black hat operators are finally uh having to pay for what they've done. And it's a good time right now to audit your site and make sure that everything is as crisp as you can make it, and there's not so much as a whiff of black hat SEO on your site. If there is, you need to correct that and you need to correct it right away. In some extreme cases, it may be as simple as saying, okay, we're no longer doing business. You know, in other cases, it may be a situation where you say, I don't know what this is, I don't know why it's there, but I recognize this as black hat SEO and I don't want it on my site. I don't want to be associated with it in any way. And tell your agency to get rid of it now. It's fair. What you your position's reasonable, and any SEO agency that knows their business will say, Oh, how did that happen? And they'll take, hold themselves accountable, fix it right then and there, or at least as soon as possible. So the problem, of course, and I've said this before, is the temptation to say, oh, well, that's the agency. I didn't do it, and it's not on me. Well, Google doesn't care. Google doesn't care where the content came from, doesn't care how or why the black hat SEO happened to be there. It cares that it's there, and it cares that it's diluting the rankings and the rankings for good websites, websites that are doing it the right way. They're starting to get more serious about penalizing these things. Not that they ever weren't serious, but the consequences were nowhere near as widely felt as they suddenly are right now with this new Google update, and it's only going to get bigger from here. So if your website is knowingly hosting Black Hat SEO, this is your warning sign that you need to straighten up and fly right. If you're doing it right to begin with and you can't find evidence of Black Hat SEO on your website, there's no problem. Uh at that point, the burden of proof shifts to Google to prove that you are properly delisted, de-indexed, or whatever the penalty is. So you need to think about that. You need to be aware of it. And now's a great time if you haven't already. Remember, I said at least once a week you want to go through and do an SEO audit. You want to make sure that everything's functioning the way that it should, and that there are no surprises and no problems, and that your back button hasn't been hijacked. We've talked about that in another podcast. Uh, any of those shenanigans can delist and penalize your site. If your site's been doing that and you knew about it, you're on the hook and you need to fix it before it comes back and bites you. And if you didn't know about it, it doesn't matter. You're still on the hook. Of course, for most attorneys, we don't do our own uh website design or building and often even updates. We don't do our own SEO. We have people working on that, and we have to, because you have your own docket of work that you have to deal with. Uh, you have clients depending on you, team members, staff members, court hearings, uh uh documents, uh briefs to prepare, letters to write. You have a myriad of uh functions that are taking up your day that interfere with your ability to stay on top of your SEO. And that's why you hired an agency. But ultimately, it's not the agency that's going to be penalized by any black hat SEO. So if there's a problem, it's good. Uh remember that you and your law firm are going to be on the hook to deal with it. So it's in your best interest and that of your firm and that of your current and potential clients to make that you make absolutely certain that there's no possible avenues by which you could be accused of engaging in black hat SEO. Gotta be honest, watching these black hat SEO operators have meltdowns in real time, talking about all of a sudden how their sites are being delisted and how their clients are upset and they're losing money. I'm actually happy about this. I'm happy about it uh because it's helping the the law firms and other businesses that are doing things the right way. Uh and you know, part of it, the reason for doing it right, and I care about the law firms that I serve and that I represent, getting the right results, is that I think it's critical uh to remove the bad actors off of Google listings. So black hats are only in it for themselves, and they may dress it up in a number of ways. Well, this is just a tempest and a teacup or whatever, but the reality is it's not. This is your reputation and your livelihood on the line. And if you're the head of your law firm, it's the reputation and livelihood of everyone that works at the firm. And you don't want to be associated with that. Just the same way as you wouldn't want to be associated with a senior partner who's been accused of embezzling or improperly dealing with office staff. Uh, you don't want that in real life. Why would you want it on the internet, which in this case is exactly what's happening? It's malfeasance by another name. We don't want that, and you don't want that to happen for you at your firm. I want your firm to grow. I want your firm to succeed and your firm uh to reap the benefits of being properly listed on Google. But in order for that to happen, you first and foremost have to make sure that you're doing it right and that your SEO agency is doing it right. If there's questions on whether your SEO agency is doing it right, chances are they may not be. And I'm sorry uh to be so blunt about it, but at this point, with the amount of chatter on the black hat SEO chat boards and websites, uh it there's no longer any excuse for not doing things the right way. It's only going to get harder from here for websites that do not strictly uh ban Black Hat SEO as a practice. So I want you to be aware of that and I want you to be proactive in looking for it and finding it if it's there. And if it's not there, great. You have nothing to worry about. But a black hat SEO audit should be a regular part of your weekly check-in with your website to make sure that you don't have any of these problems that the Google algorithms are looking for. Because again, and I stress this point, those algorithms are only going to get better with time. AI is only getting smarter about what they're looking at, identifying, and doing something about it. And you don't want your law firm and your website to be collateral damage because somebody else puts something on your website that shouldn't be there. So Google has the black hats on the run. If you're one of them, you need to stop now. You need to stop and you need to fix it. And that means uh, and if that means that you lose some rankings for a little bit of time, so be it. Because the alternative is that those algorithms are going to catch you and the penalties are going to be a lot more severe than losing rankings. You could have your entire site delisted. And if you don't act, it's only going to get worse from here. Again, if you're doing it right, if your agency is doing it right and you run regular SEO audits and you're not having any problems, then things are fine. Keep doing what you're doing. Make sure that you and your SEO agency are up on the latest white hat SEO and you have nothing to worry about. But since the black hats are on the run, I'm going to take a minute and enjoy the moment because this has been a long time coming. And when I say a long time, I mean most of a decade and a half since Google started getting really serious about cracking down on it. Now that the technology and the necessity have finally aligned, it's only going to get better for those who do things the right way. And it's only going to get worse for those who try to cut corners and use Black Hat SEO. Again, I'm John Risvey, the Law Firm Growth Professor. Before you leave today, I'd appreciate it if you could click the like button. Make sure to subscribe so you don't miss any updates from this channel. And don't forget to share with your friends and colleagues, other attorneys who may find this podcast helpful. Thank you so much for stopping by. And be sure to tune in next week for more tips and trip and tricks for making your website's digital presence stronger and more durable. I look forward to seeing you next time.