There is one key question that everything SEO or online marketing consultant must ask themselves. That question is “are you an SEO tortoise or an SEO hare?” You probably remember being told this fable when you were a child - the story of the overly confident hare who bragged about how fast he could run, only to be beaten by the slow and steady tortoise in a race. This applies to SEO and online marketing for several reasons; first of all, when it comes to dominating the SERPs, an seo company that puts in the time and effort to build a solid website and to create compelling content that brings in links and readers on its own is going to have to wait longer to see results, but their results will be much more permanent.

Ethical search engine optimization might not be as speedy as black hat or even gray hat techniques, but those same techniques are likely to come back to haunt you later in the form of getting your website penalized or even banned from the search engines. At the very least, keyword stuffing, cloaking, or other shady tactics are helping your ranking (temporarily) at the expense of your visitors - and the user experience should always be your most important consideration.

Of course, our SEO company thinks there is absolutely nothing wrong with being an SEO tortoise - because slow and steady wins the race. So forget about the color of your SEO hat next time you are characterizing your online marketing approach, and ask yourself if you are a tortoise or a hare.

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