Black Hat SEO

In my most recent article we went over some of what is involved in search engine optimization, and now we will be going over what you should never do to optimize your site. More specifically, what black hat SEO is and why you should never use it. Everyone wants their site to be top in the search engines, but how far can you go to get an optimized site, until it becomes too much?

Beware of using certain search engine optimization strategies. Some of them can actually end up penalizing your website in the search engines or banning them altogether. I am talking about Black Hat SEO. Though there is not one singular definition for it yet, it is not something you want anything to do with. Black Hat SEO is more of a category of SEO techniques that are considered to be unfair, underhanded, manipulating, and against search engine SEO guidelines. With a category that can be vague at times, here is a bit of light on what is being called Black Hat SEO right now.

Some specific and common examples of Black Hat SEO:

1. One technique is to fill the bottom of a page with invisible, or micro text that is loaded with keywords for the search engine spiders to find. This boosts the keyword count, so that the search engines will deem it more relevant to those terms and rank it higher. Why it is called Black Hat SEO: the text is only there for the search engine spiders, and so it isn’t being used for the benefit of the website users. It is prohibited by many search engines.

2. Another technique is to create pages that are filled with certain content to get your site listed higher in the search engines. While search engine spiders will see them and rank them, people normally won’t. Most of these pages will automatically redirect the searcher to the actual site. These are called doorway pages, and they are very bad. Why this is called Black Hat SEO: the pages aren’t for the use of the searchers, they just use the spiders so that they can bring more people in to their site, even if the search terms had nothing to do with the actual site. It is also prohibited by many search engines.

3. Cloaking is similar to doorway pages in that what the searcher sees may be different than what the spiders see. Cloaking is when the visitor and the search engine spiders are given different pages of content. While the spider thinks the site is relevant it is ranked higher on the search engine, then when someone clicks on it, it shows them a page that is completely different than what the spiders saw. Why this is called Black Hat SEO: If you haven’t realized already, what makes this bad is that the spiders aren’t getting what the searcher is getting. Besides, most search engines discourage this as well.

It is important that what the spiders see on the page is the same as what the visitor sees on the page.

Black Hat SEO includes many different techniques. One way to determine if you are encountering Black Hat SEO is to ask yourself whether or not what you are doing has any benefit to the human visitors that come to your site. If what you are doing is purely for the purpose of the search engine spiders, then I might reconsider doing it if it adds nothing to the human visitor’s experience on your site. Wanting to be on top in the search engines is a good thing, but you need to make sure that you’re on top in the keywords that really matter and are relevant to your site.

Black Hat SEO is a very serious thing to watch out for, especially if you are hiring a company or outside individual to optimize your site. Before you hire a company to do your search engine optimization, do a bit of research and don’t be afraid to ask them questions about what they do. Google has a great Webmasters Guide that provides a nice and clear interpretation as to what is acceptable SEO and what is not. The last thing you want is to have your website banned from the search engines because someone else used Black Hat SEO. Using fair and solid SEO may be a longer process in getting you to the top, but it is much safer and more rewarding than using a “quick fix” and running the risk of being banned. MonsterWeb.net provides several SEO packages that can get you started, and they explain what they do in their SEO process. You can read about it here.