Black Hat SEO

Black Hat SEO Practices

Black Hat Methods

Keyword Stuffing: This is probably the most common technique, it includes adding text/copy the color of the background, hidden on layers, or via an invisibile div tag.

Cloaked Pages: These provide very different results depending on whether a person or search engine bot requests the page. Doorway pages are very low-quality sites with very little content related to what you were looking for, but are filled with hidden keyword text. Most of these sites use the 'click to enter' technique.

Link Farms: Groups of pages and sites that continuously link to each other to increase rankings. They're known by the legitimate SEO & SEM companies as "Mutual Admiration Societies."

Spam Blogs: Their sole purpose is to try and convince you to buy an affiliate product. They look like real blogs with news, information, reviews etc., but are completely fake. Common ones are for products such as diet aids (Acai) and "moms-working-from-home" get rich schemes.

In search engine optimization (SEO) terminology, black hat SEO refers to the use of aggressive SEO strategies, techniques and tactics that focus only on search engines and not a human audience, and usually does not obey search engines guidelines.

Grey Hat Methods

While not exactly illegal practices, you are still running the risk of having your business website penalize or banned. The most common example would be a higher keyword usage then normal on a site. Major companies (or their marketing companies) have been caught using Black Hat methods including JC Penny, BMW and Ricoh.

SEO Squatting: Buying up expired domains that are relevant to your keywords and then adding a few pages of content with links to your main site.

Linking Yourself: This is when you are posting comments on many blogs and linking back to your website.

Duplicate Content: The same content on different websites, all relating to the same topic/product, specifically for your business.

Redesiging: Changing the look of your website at very regular intervals, but not changing or updating the actual content.

x-SITE-d only incorporates White Hat elements into each page, when we build your website.

It's Not Worth It

Black Hat SEO uses quick and easy methods that get you banned. While it might be tempting to use these methods to jump quickly to the top of search engine listings, the results are fleeting, false, and will most likely get your website banned.

Do you really want to destroy your business this way?

Congratulations You're Banned!

Using these unethical techniques can result in what's referred to as "Google Penalty". That means your website will drop dramatically in the search and ranking results or be completely banned from any search results.

If you find yourself banned, clean up your website and any questionable SEO techniques! Then file a re-inclusion request with Google and hope you haven't completely shot yourself in the foot. The re-inclusion request can be found here.