SEO practitioners have a host of ways to achieve higher rankings for a site, but not all techniques are considered above board. Bending the generally accepted rules established by search engines is called “black hat” SEO. And while black hat SEO is not technically illegal, it is discouraged by search engines and can hurt your business in the long run.
Some of the most common black hat SEO techniques include:
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Keyword Stuffing -- Cramming as many keywords as possible into the text of a webpage, with no attempt to create useful information for a human reader. Long lists of keywords or randomly repeated keywords on a page are SEO no-nos.
•
Doorway Pages – Creating standalone, keyword-heavy pages specifically to rank in search engine results, but that automatically redirect visitors to another destination.
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Invisible Text – Using white text on a white background to fool a search engine spider into ranking your page for terms that might not be relevant to the information on the rest of the page.
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Linking Schemes – Offering payment for inbound links, creating new sites solely to link back to a main site (known as link pyramids), or placing hundreds of inbound links on unrelated pages just to boost a specific page’s rank.
Search engines can penalize websites that are found to be using black hat techniques, often dinging those pages way down in the search results or de-listing the pages altogether.
Even big brands get burned by black hat SEO: Major retailer J.C. Penney got caught in a black hat SEO nightmare after the 2010 holiday shopping season, when Google found that the company’s SEO firm had used a link-buying scheme (paying to place links on hundreds of spammy websites unrelated to the targeted J.C Penney page) to help the retailer achieve top rankings for dozens broad product terms such as “area rugs,” “furniture,” “home décor” and “skinny jeans.”
Once Google caught on to the scam, it started hammering J.C. Penney’s rankings. In just over one week, the average position for a J.C. Penney webpage for 59 search terms dropped from 1.3 to 52, according to a New York Times report.
The best way to avoid falling victim to black hat SEO is to ask your current or potential SEO vendors if they use any of these common black hat tactics. If they try to talk you into doorway pages, link-buying schemes, or other black-hat practices, take your business elsewhere!
Some of the most common black hat SEO techniques include:
•
Keyword Stuffing -- Cramming as many keywords as possible into the text of a webpage, with no attempt to create useful information for a human reader. Long lists of keywords or randomly repeated keywords on a page are SEO no-nos.
•
Doorway Pages – Creating standalone, keyword-heavy pages specifically to rank in search engine results, but that automatically redirect visitors to another destination.
•
Invisible Text – Using white text on a white background to fool a search engine spider into ranking your page for terms that might not be relevant to the information on the rest of the page.
•
Linking Schemes – Offering payment for inbound links, creating new sites solely to link back to a main site (known as link pyramids), or placing hundreds of inbound links on unrelated pages just to boost a specific page’s rank.
Search engines can penalize websites that are found to be using black hat techniques, often dinging those pages way down in the search results or de-listing the pages altogether.
Even big brands get burned by black hat SEO: Major retailer J.C. Penney got caught in a black hat SEO nightmare after the 2010 holiday shopping season, when Google found that the company’s SEO firm had used a link-buying scheme (paying to place links on hundreds of spammy websites unrelated to the targeted J.C Penney page) to help the retailer achieve top rankings for dozens broad product terms such as “area rugs,” “furniture,” “home décor” and “skinny jeans.”
Once Google caught on to the scam, it started hammering J.C. Penney’s rankings. In just over one week, the average position for a J.C. Penney webpage for 59 search terms dropped from 1.3 to 52, according to a New York Times report.
The best way to avoid falling victim to black hat SEO is to ask your current or potential SEO vendors if they use any of these common black hat tactics. If they try to talk you into doorway pages, link-buying schemes, or other black-hat practices, take your business elsewhere!
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