Black Hat SEO

The race among websites to attain high search engine rankings has brought about a number of methods and techniques used to achieve these goals. These methods can be categorized into two groups depending on their acceptability to the common search engines. Search engine optimization or SEO methods that conform to search engine guidelines for acceptability are called White Hat SEO, and those that are viewed as less acceptable are called Black Hat SEO.

One of the most, if not the most, popular search engine–Google–has made known that tricks such as including keywords in web pages as invisible text and having two different pages for the Google spider and to web visitors are frowned upon.

The categorization of SEO methods as either Black Hat SEO or White Hat SEO has actually generated a lot of controversy regarding its fairness or lack thereof. While those who strictly adhere to search engine guidelines feel that those who resort to Black Hat SEO methods are trying to manipulate search engine results pages or SERPs unfairly, the opposite camp is quick to counter that any attempt at SEO should be considered within the bounds of acceptability, and that in the SEO game anything goes. The fact that irrelevant or even totally useless sites often rank higher in SERPs further strengthens the Black Hatters cause for any method necessary to achieve their goals. They further believe that Black Hat SEO methods actually help everyone concerned by giving the web surfers more of the results that they are looking for and by making the search engine in question more effective for the searchers, thereby increasing their popularity.

To make matters worse, Google actually allows certain websites of their choosing the privilege of using methods that are at odds with their own stated policies, which only serves to add fuel to an already raging fire.

One complaint that has recently been leveled against Google is that their policy regarding cloaking is inconsistent, and that company guidelines regarding this issue are long overdue for an update. Some critics have suggested that since Google itself allows instances of cloaking in an
attempt to improve searching, it is a bit of a double standard to treat other cloaking methods as inappropriate.

This whole Black Hat/White Hat SEO issue wouldn’t be such a big deal if the websites in question actually deserve the rankings that they achieve. The problem begins when an inordinately large number of sites make it to the top of SERPs, not by virtue of their content but because of their SEO methods. Nobody likes someone or something that exploits a system to their advantage, and that is exactly what so many income-generating sites that resort to Black Hat SEO techniques do.

Regardless of where you stand on the issue however, it would be best not to rely on Black Hat SEO techniques. Unfairly or not, and regardless of any double standards that may or may not exist, search engines such as Google will take steps against those who practice these methods, either by lowering their ranks, or even by banning them from the search engine entirely.

As if that weren’t enough to dissuade you, Black Hat SEO is actually a fairly complicated task that requires significant knowledge and skills in the various methods. If you are reading this article as part of your initial foray into the wild and wooly world of SEO, you probably do not have what it takes to successfully implement–and get away with–Black Hat SEO techniques anyway.

Here are some things you can do to avoid being branded a Black Hatter by Google:

Do not use invisible text on your website. There are several ways of doing this, one of which is using white text on a white background. Even using light colors on a white background is likely to be treated with suspicion. If you think that search engines can’t tell that you are using colors that are very similar, you are sadly mistaken. We won’t go into the ways that you can trick Google into thinking that the background color of your web pages provide a visual contrast when it actually doesn’t, but suffice to say that they are probably aware of all of these tricks.

Cloaking is a no-no. Cloaking involves having two separate pages for what would normally be one page of your site: one to show the Googlebot and one to show your site’s visitors. Again, Google can quickly see through your tricks, in this case by visiting all of the pages in its index, and storing the content for later analysis. Once Googlebot discovers what you’re up to, you’re in trouble.

Say no to Keyword Stuffing. You have probably run into web pages before that are little more than paragraphs stuffed full of keywords and little or no actual content. How annoying is that? Google seems to think it is very annoying, and so too is the practice of packing what would otherwise be acceptable web pages full of inappropriately placed keywords.

Doorways are for people. Doorway pages have been used a lot over the years for the sheer purpose of scoring a high rank in the search engines. These are pages that do not have any actual content, and instead links to another page in the same site, or automatically redirects visitors there. Google has since brought down the hammer on sites that feature these pages, and as a result, many websites were wiped from the index. Even if you call your doorway pages by another name, search engines will still see through this attempt to fool your visitors and will take a dim view of your efforts. Even orphaned pages may suffer the same fate, so you should avoid them whenever possible.

Spam is for eating. There are many people who don’t like spam–in more ways than one actually–but search engines particularly despise this brand of SEO cuisine. Having pages on your site that are created specifically to gain high rankings are bad news as far as search engines are concerned. Suffice it to say that you should avoid them if you want to keep your website attractive to the search engines.