Avoiding Black Hat SEO Tactics

Black Hat SEO (Search Engine Optimization) refers to a category of tactics that attempt to trick the search engines into high natural rankings.

Some of these tactics will work. However, they are all short term as the search engines will eventually figure out what is happening and quickly remove all your pages from the search engine index. Once your pages are removed from the index, your completely invisible to the world.

The purpose of this article is to educate you on some of these tactics so that you can avoid them yourself. With all the information that is available in cyberspace, you might come across one or more of these techniques and assume they are ok to use. They are unethical and could easily get you banned from one or more of the major search engines. It's definitely not worth the possible short-term gain in traffic.

While not an exhaustive list, let's take a look at some of the more popular Black Hat SEO techniques.

Black Hat SEO Tactic #1: Keyword Stuffing

In my article Website Traffic Enhancement Tips, I discuss the importance of keyword density when writing your content pages. Each of your pages should be based on a specific high-demand keyword and using this keyword repeatedly in your body text helps the search engines rank the page for that keyword.

A good keyword density for your body copy is 3-5%. However, there is a black hat SEO technique called Keyword Stuffing that uses the keyword phrase much more than the typical 3-5% density. In the past, this technique worked, but now the search engines are smarter and will realize when a page is stuffed with a particular keyword. Stick with 3-5% keyword density and this is an issue you will never have to worry about.

As an example, the main keyword phrase for this page is "Black Hat SEO." You'll find this keyword sprinkled throughout the page at about the right density. The most important part is that it reads normally. With keyword stuffing, the resultant copy is awkward and doesn't read normally.

Black Hat SEO Tactic #2: Hidden Text

Keyword stuffing always led to issues with readability since the same keyword phrase was popping up with unnatural regularity. Because of this, some people continued the practice of stuffing keywords but made the text color the same as the background color and placed these keywords in areas of the page that didn't interfere with the body text. This made the text invisible to readers but still visible to the search engines. Now, search engines are wise to keyword density no matter what the font color. Steer clear from this tactic.

Black Hat SEO Tactic #3: URL Redirects

A redirect happens when a you click on a search engine result but you actually get served a different page. Some people will use black hat techniques to make a page rank high in the engines and then send visitors to a completely different page using a piece of redirect code. This new page usually has nothing to do with the visitor's initial search query and typically sends them to a high-pressure sales page.

Black Hat SEO Tactic #4: Link Farms

A Link farm is a community of websites that exist only to provide links to other sites. Because Google and the other search engines use inbound links as one measurement of website popularity, many link farms were established to allow webmasters to place links pointing back to their sites, thereby increasing their search engine rankings.

While this worked initially, most search engines now look at the "authority" of the site that is providing the link. If your site has many links from "low authority" sites (such as link farms), you'll find these inbound links are given very little weight in increasing your search ranking. In fact, these poor quality inbound links can actually hurt your rankings. The bottom line? Stay away from link farms.

Black Hat SEO Tactic #5: Buying Links

Inbound links from quality sites will raise your search engine rankings. Since this is the case, why not simply pay respected sites to provide a link back to your site? Well, Google and the other search engines really don't like this. Actually, what they don't like is a paid link that has no editorial judgment.

It's standard practice for website owners to purchase links from website directories that have category listings in their markets. The difference here is that you should pick well established directories that will manually review your site and provide an editorial judgment as to whether a link to your site is relevant and warranted.

The bottom line is that search engines want links to be relevant. Paying an established directory a fee for a manual review of your site is ok, but paying some site to give you a link without a manual review is not. How can the search engines tell the difference? Well, for one, if a directory contains a lot of links to websites that are of low value or spammy, the search engines can certainly pick up on this and devalue the directory.

You do need to be careful when purchasing links from directories. Do so only from well respected directories that will manually review your site for inclusion. I recommend you try and find directories that have a strong Pagerank score. A Pagerank of 5 or higher is a safe bet. You can check a directory's Pagerank score by using this PR Checking Tool.

Black Hat SEO Tactic #6: Link Spamming

Link spamming typically involves a software program that searches for blogs, forums, guestbooks and other online discussion groups. When one is found, a link is automatically left in a comment area. The program can deposit hundreds and even thousands of links within a very short time. Most blogging software now have ways of detecting and filtering link spammers.

Black Hat SEO Tactic #7: Duplicate Sites

Duplicate sites involve creating multiple copies of a website and tweaking a few elements in hopes that the new sites will rank higher and/or increase traffic. Fortunately, Google and the other search engines are pretty good at catching duplicate sites and removing them. If the site is changed enough, it is possible that the search engines won't detect the duplication but you can still be reported to the search engines and your site banned.

Final Words

So, while I'm confident YOU would never use any of the above techniques, what should you do if you find a competitor using one or more of them? Is it wrong or unethical to report them? Absolutely not! We all use the search engines and it is our responsibility to report unethical sites when we run across them. Spam sites can be reported to Google by using their Spam Report Form.

As Internet Guru Ken Evoy says, "Keep it real" for your visitor and you won't have to worry about getting penalized from any of these tactics. It goes without saying that if you ever hire an SEO consultant and they recommend any of these techniques, run the other way. These techniques can certainly bring short term traffic, but ultimately, you stand a very high chance of getting banned from one or more search engines.