What Is Black Hat SEO –SEO Basics IV
Continuing with the series on basic SEO questions, one question that we optimizers frequently hear is “What is Black Hat SEO?”
There is no generally accepted definition for black hat SEO. The answers depend on who you are speaking to, something considered fair by one webmaster maybe off-limits to another. Generally, efforts to manipulate Search Engines to gain quick results are considered as Black Hat SEO.
Besides the principles that web companies and marketing personnel apply to their work, guidelines can also vary based on the industry and sometimes the Search Engines too.
Search engine operators, such as Google, Bing and Yahoo, have published guidelines about techniques they consider to be Black Hat and in violation of their policies.
There are no shortcuts in SEO. It is a long-term process that requires perseverance and diligence. Black hat techniques may look tempting and easy and may give short-term results but they are detrimental in the long run. They can cause your site to get banned by the SEs which is every webmaster’s worst nightmare..
Here are some common BlackHat SEO techniques to be aware of :
Cloaking a website by displaying one website to visitors and other one to Google’s spiders. The most common way to do this is using the “iframe” redirect code.
Using Hidden Text or “white” text written on a white background to stuff keywords within webpages.
Creating Doorway pages which involves having a website optimized for one set of keywords, then redirecting its traffic to another website once it is indexed.
Using Automated Submission/Link Building Software that submits your site to hundreds of directories that probably have no relevance to your site. This is also known as Link Farming.
Keyword Stuffing or adding a large number of keywords in the meta-tags.
Buying Paid Links indiscriminately to try and build inbound links.
