By Carl Weiss
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| Courtesy of SocialMediaTherapy.com |
Before 2000, black hatting
was practically a requirement, since the practice was so prevalent. However,
during the past few years, search engine operators have designed their
“spiders” to search and destroy anyone employing black hat techniques. In
fact, the past half dozen updates on Google have been
designed specifically to crack down sites using these techniques.
This has resulted in a number of sites being either unlisted or even
blacklisted. The problem we have today is people still
don't understand where the line in the sand has been drawn regarding black
hat practices and technology. In this article we're going to show you what
are considered black hat techniques so you can avoid them, and who’s still
wearing a black hat on the Wild, Wild Web.
The problem today is most
people still don’t know where the line in the sand has been drawn when it comes
to black hatting. And the line keeps
getting moved. So to make it easy to
understand what is considered black hat SEO, I’ve compiled the list below.
Keyword Stuffing relies on inserting repeated keywords within the
text, hidden text, title or meta tags in order to generate increased relevance
of a page. (By “hidden text” I’m referring to the technique of writing the text
in the same color as the background so that no one, with the exception of the
spiders, is able to read it.)
Spamdexing, like keyword stuffing, involves repeating unrelated phrases, to manipulate the
relevance or prominent resources indexed in a manner inconsistent with the
purpose of the indexing system. Again,
the idea here is to fool the search engines into rating some keywords higher by
trickery. So if an SEO professional (I use professional loosely here) mention manipulating
the search index in any way you know they are trying to trick the search
engines.
Doorway Pages are web pages created specifically for
spamdexing. Also known as bridge pages
or jump pages, their purpose is to redirect those who click on the page onto
another website. If you have ever
clicked on a search engine listing only to be redirected to a porn or a spam
site, then you have hit a doorway page.
Doorway pages are relatively easy to identify, since they’re designed
for search engines and not for people.
They redirect the reader so quickly that it’s virtually impossible for a
human being to even see the original page.
Link Farming does not involve the swine, cows of chickens,
although the search engines tend to treat perpetrators of the technique as
swine and slaughter anyone ranking using these techniques to trick the search
engines. Link farming creates numerous
backlinks for a site by generating an increasing number of fake sites that link
to your own. Back in the late ’90s and
into the first few years of this century, paid link farms proliferated like
weeds online. Since a large number of links
indicate popularity to the search engines, these businesses did quite well
until the search engine spiders became savvy enough to determine real links
from the farmed kind. Today, relying on
fake links is one of the quickest ways to get unlisted.
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| Courtesy of Sites18.com |
Duplicate Content on
Multiple Sites is an SEO no-no. Many people try to game the system by
creating clones of sites with different URLs in order to generate top
ranking. The problem is. Once the search
engines catch onto to this tactic (and they always do), all of these sites will
wind up unlisted. It’s better to create
unique content for each Landing Page (so they’re not carbon copies) in order to
go after the SEO high ground. They can
have a similar skin, provided that the guts are different. This pertains to articles, blogs, podcast,
videos and other such content. Make sure your content is repurposed enough or
the search blogs will label your content as duplicate and assume you are trying
to trick them.
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| Courtesy of All spammedUp.com |
What happens if you get
caught being a black hatter?
If you or anyone in your
employ is caught using black hat SEO, the penalties can be severe. Not only will your websites start
disappearing from Page One, but depending upon the infraction, you may never be
able to get back on top of the heap again.
Google especially, has a long memory.
Case in point: We were hired
by a client with two physical locations and corresponding websites to help them
conquer the search engines. What the
client failed to mention was they had previously hired a so-called “SEO
professional” to promote one of their two sites. This supposed professional had used black hat
techniques to get them onto Page One of Google.
This worked for about a month, then our client disappeared Google altogether.
They hired us a few months
later and failed to disclose this fact. After about four months of hard work,
we succeeded in getting their first site onto Page One of Google, Yahoo and Bing. However, their second site was only placing
on Page One for Bing and Yahoo. After
questioning the clients, they admitted they had indeed hired someone whom they
knew used black hatting SEO techniques on Google. So “poisoned” was their second site ranking,
that it not only affected their main website, but it also puts the brakes on
any other Landing Page attached to their physical address. This is because Google Maps and Google Local
linked any Landing Pages to their actual physical address. Since the prior site
and associated physical address had previously conducted black hatting
infractions, all of their associated URLs were penalized. As a result, the only ways for them to
generate Page One results were to physically relocate their office, or resort
to pay-per-click ads on Google.
What Should You do to Get on Page One of the Search Engines?
My answer to this question: Give the search
engines what they want. Search engines want to provide users with the best
relevant results, and the best pages that match what someone is looking for. To
achieve this, a business must be committed to producing high quality, unique,
useful and relevant content. It must be publishing it on a regular basis.
Regular at the very least means; daily for social posts, and weekly for blogs,
videos, slide shares and podcasts. Nurture web partners in your industry that
are willing to engage in link exchanges or unidirectional links. Foster social
network followers to shares your posts, leave testimonials, and positive
ratings of your product/service or company. Lastly, you need to encourage
people to read, comment and share all of your unique content (i.e., your blogs,
videos, podcasts, slide shares and white
papers etc.). Of course, all of this
content needs to be keyword relevant and optimized. If you commit to producing
this level of content, you’ll receive a Page One ranking because you're giving
people what they want and – coincidentally – that’s the same thing Google and
the other search engines want.
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| Courtesy of Accendodigital.com |
You Don’t Need to Cheat
Them to Beat Them
The reason I shared the
previous case is to remind you that if you really want to start “working the
web to win,” then you have to stop looking for the easy way out. Instead of trying to cheat your way to the
top, you need to make a long-term commitment to produce and publish high quality,
relevant and unique content on a regular basis. This does not mean that it all has to be
unique or yours but it does have to be useful to your followers. Sure, it can
take a several months to see the results, but it’s worth it. Organic position created in this way has
staying power. As an added inducement, when the search engines alter their
algorithms you won’t be whipped around and forced to start from scratch. Plus, you’ll never run the risk of being
either unlisted or blackballed by the search engines. Remember, the good guys always wear the white
hats.
In this article, I discussed
what search engines such as Google deem to be black hat techniques. I’ve shared
an example of what can happen to companies that try and cheat the search
engines, and also explained what search engines are using to determine page
ranking. Using these legitimate techniques produce the rewards webmasters so
ardently seek in the new world of Web 2.0.
If you found this article
informative, share it with your friends, family and co-workers. If you would like to read other articles we have written on this subject, enter "black hat" in the search box and you will find more than a dozen articles to choose from. If you have
something to add, just leave a comment below. I look forward to reading your
responses.
If you like this article, you can find more by typing “black hat” or "Internet security" in the search box at the top left of this blog.
If you like this article, you can find more by typing “black hat” or "Internet security" in the search box at the top left of this blog.
Until next time.
If you would like a free copy of our book, "Internet Marketing Tips for the 21st Century,"please fill in the form below and we will send you this free eBook. Your information is always keep private and never sold.Carl Weiss is president of Working the Web to Win, a digital marketing agency based in Jacksonville, Florida. You can listen to Carl live every Tuesday at 4 p.m. Eastern on BlogTalkRadio.
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As usual, very elucidating blog. These guys know the web.
ReplyDeleteGreat article - informative
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