Isulong SEOPH: The Black Hat Technique

Isulong SEOPH participants are really onto it. Since the contest has
no definite rules on what to use, maybe it’s about time discussing some
techniques in the SEO world. The Do’s and Don’ts of search engine
marketing.

Yeah… Isulong SEOPH participants are hearing this from SEO experts/contestants.. Black hat… Grey Hat.. White Hat.. Are these the same as Black Magic, Grey Magic (as if there’s one?), and White magic? I HOPE SO… i wish i could chant.. "ISULONGUS SEOPHI!" then wave my magic wand like good old Harry Potter does. And alas, my site is number one!

Ok. let’s get back to the real world where the magic wands are our
keyboards. I came across this good reference about Black Hat
Techniques. But I must warn you these tactics are considered black hat
for a rason. These are not legitimate tactics and while some may work
in the short term. And this is the most important part: They WILL Get
Your Website Penalized And/Or Banned Eventually.

Constantly webmasters attempt to “trick” the search engines into

ranking sites and pages based on illegitimate means. Whether this is

through the use of doorway pages, hidden text, interlinking, keyword

spamming or other means they are meant to only trick a search engine

into placing a website high in the rankings. Because of this, sites

using black-hat tactics tend to drop from these positions as fast as

they climb (if they do climb at all).

The following tactics

are not listed to help you “trick” the search engines but rather to

warn you against these tactics should you hear they are used by other

SEO’s (this is not to say that all other search engine positioning

experts use these tactics, just that some do and you should be warned

against them).

Due to the sheer number of tricks and

scripts used against search engines they could not possibly all be

listed here. Below you will find only some of the most common black-hat

tactics. Many SEO’s and webmasters have simply modified the below

tactics in hopes that the new technique will work. Truthfully they may,

but not forever and probably not for long.

Black-Hat Search Engine Positioning Tactics:

Keyword Stuffing

This is probably one of the most commonly abused forms of search engine

spam. Essentially this is when a webmaster or SEO places a large number

of instances of the targeted keyword phrase in hopes that the search

engine will read this as relevant. In order to offset the fact that

this text generally reads horribly it will often be placed at the

bottom of a page and in a very small font size. An additional tactic

that is often associated with this practice is hidden text which is

commented on below.

Hidden Text

Hidden text is text that is set at the same color as the background or

very close to it. While the major search engines can easily detect text

set to the same color as a background some webmasters will try to get

around it by creating an image file the same color as the text and

setting the image file as the background. While undetectable at this

time to the search engines this is blatant spam and websites using this

tactic are usually quickly reported by competitors and the site blacklisted.

Cloaking

In short, cloaking is a method of presenting different information to

the search engines than a human visitor would see. There are too many

methods of cloaking to possibly list here and some of them are still

undetectable by the search engines. That said, which methods still work

and how long they will is rarely set-in-stone and like hidden text,

when one of your competitors figures out what is being done (and don’t

think they aren’t watching you if you’re holding one of the top search

engine positions) they can and will report your site and it will get

banned.

Doorway Pages

Doorway pages are pages added to a website solely to target a specific

keyword phrase or phrases and provide little in the way of value to a

visitor. Generally the content on these pages provide no information

and the page is only there to promote a phrase in hopes that once a

visitor lands there, that they will go to the homepage and continue on

from there. Often to save time these pages are generated by software

and added to a site automatically. This is a very dangerous practice.

Not only are many of the methods of injecting doorway pages banned by

the search engines but a quick report to the search engine of this

practice and your website will simply disappear along with all the

legitimate ranks you have attained with your genuine content pages.

Redirects

Redirecting, when used as a black-hat tactic, is most commonly brought

in as a compliment to doorway pages. Because doorway pages generally

have little or no substantial content, redirects are sometime applied

to automatically move a visitor to a page with actual content such as

the homepage of the site. As quickly as the search engines find ways of

detecting such redirects, the spammers are uncovering ways around

detection. That said, the search engines figure them out eventually and

your site will be penalized. That or you’ll be reported by a competitor

or a disgruntled searcher.

Duplicate Sites

A throwback tactic that rarely works these days. When affiliate

programs became popular many webmasters would simply create a copy of

the site they were promoting, tweak it a bit, and put it online in

hopes that it would outrank the site it was promoting and capture their

sales. As the search engines would ideally like to see unique content

across all of their results this tactic was quickly banned and the

search engines have methods for detecting and removing duplicate sites

from their index. If the site is changed just enough to avoid automatic

detection with hidden text or the such, you can once again be reported

to the search engines and be banned that way.

Interlinking

As incoming links became more important for search engine positioning

the practice of building multiple websites and linking them together to

build the overall link popularity of them all became a common practice.

This tactic is more difficult to detect than others when done

“correctly” (we cannot give the method for “correct” interlinking here

as it’s still undetectable at the time of this writing and we don’t

want to provide a means to spam engines). This tactic is difficult to

detect from a user standpoint unless you end up with multiple sites in

the top positions on the search engines in which case it is likely that

you will be reported.

Reporting Your Competitors

While this may seem a bit off, the practice of reporting competitors

that you find using the tactics noted above or other search engine spam

tactics is entirely legitimate and shouldn’t be considered at all

unethical. When we take on search engine positioning clients this is

always incorporated into our practices when applicable (which happily

is not that often).

When a competitor uses unfair tactics to beat you it is entirely fair to report them.