Black hat SEO
tactics can get your site penalized or permanently banned. These are a list of tactics to look out for when dealing with an SEO company, should you decide to hire one for your search engine optimization needs.
Many of the tactics are being used by SEO professionals, many who claim they are professionals. If you hire them, they may work well for you for a short time, but they may also get your web site permanently banned. Having your web site banned from a particular search engine can result in less visitors and potentially less business. Not worth the damage it could be to your business.
Website Cloaking
There are many ways to cloak a site, and just like it sounds, that’s exactly what you are doing. You show one version of your web site to the search engines and a completely different version to your web site visitor. Usually provided through JavaScript but there are many other ways.
I have seen this used the past, not for unethical reasons but to see how the search engines handled it. I don’t ever recommend any of these Black hat tactics and never use any of them on my client web sites.
SEO Keywords
Have you ever viewed the source code of a web site and noticed that they have 100s of keywords? This is as important as watching grass grow. It’s a complete waste of time and a black hat SEO tactic, one which doesn’t work. Many SEO programmers think this is relevant to getting their website in a top position and it actually is nothing more than a waste of time. Many times they write paragraphs with as many keywords in them. Reading it is like reading broken English.
Doorway Pages
These pages bring in visitors for keywords related to their searches, but are used to guide the visitor to another site that is lower ranked. The pages may have the over use of keywords or hidden text or even link redirecting. I have seen these used to get ranking benefits and then eventually you would be sent to a mirror site as an inbound link.
Hidden Text
Mostly you see this at the bottom of a page. There may be lots of words and phrases associated with the site description or the product or service being sold. Often the words are invisible, hence being called “hidden text” through the use of CSS (cascading style sheets). Most black hat SEO programmers make the text the same color as the background color of the web site so the text doesn’t show to the user visiting the web site. Search engines algorithms being used now have a way of finding these words and penalizing your site for using them.
Duplicate Websites
Many web site owners try using this tactic with competitors or affiliate sites that rank above them on search engines. They will copy a competitor site code, change the CSS to make it a different color, add some new wording and upload the site to try and grab customers from the competitor or affiliate site. Rarely does this work and the first person to see it is usually your competitor which is more than happy to report you to Google or the search engine you are ranking high on.
Redirecting Websites
It is known that incoming links to your site give your web site a positive bonus with the search engines. It makes your site seem more relevant because more sites are linking to you. However, people noticed this and started farming incoming links (see Link Farming below) from every site possible. Many of these sites not only have nothing to do with the topic you are trying to get visitors from, but they usually have nothing to even do with the same industry your business is in. What some website owners are doing is sending you to many other websites through the search engines yet all those sites point to their site. This may sound legitimate to some extent but when spammers do it, they do it to the utmost degree. Building thousands of generic sites, changing the CSS and adding in some content so it looks like a different site. As you click around you will notice every link goes to another site.
Note: When doing a proper redirect of a page, I use a 301 redirect. It changes the server .htaccess file and will keep visitors of your site from viewing pages that have been permanently removed or placed elsewhere on your site.
Link Farming
A method of posting links on sites and link farms (site pages that contain no relevant text, just rows and rows of links). Link exchanges and affiliate sites use this method. I’m still not convinced that this tactic has enough power to harm you greatly because of the competition sending thousands of bad links your way, but I do believe it takes off a small percentage around -.0003 percent of link juice away from you.
Keeping the playing field clean of debris will help you become a better SEO developer and keep your clients happy and coming back for more of your talents. If you’re a business owner looking to enhance your site and help get it growing from traffic, staying away from Black Hat SEO tactics are a great start.
Contact me if you need help!
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No one can eat the fruit of a black hat SEO.
Nice article, Regards.
Если правдивой, я бы порекомендовала поставить Вам кнопку “Дай 5 рублёв”,
яб с удовольствием перевела владельцу 5 рублей. А вы?
Roughly translated -
You should add a button to have people donate $5 to you. I know I would be glad to donate.
Советую держателю блога установить плюгин “Akismet”, а то у тебя левых комментариев собралось потрясающе большое количество.
Или можно “AntiSpam Bee”, так-же хорошая штука.
Успехов в ведении блогов!
С Уважением, Сергей Вакулов
Roughly translated to this -
I advise the owner of this blog to get the plugin “Akismet”, if you have a staggering large number or comments, it takes out the spam. Or if possible “AntiSpam Bee” plugin is also a good spam grabber. Successes in conducting your blog! With the respect, Sergey Vakulov (if name is wrong email me)
For anyone who really wants to succeed in the online business, evade from black hat SEO. This can just bring you down and all your efforts dumped.