5 Black Hat SEO Techniques - Internet

Black hat SEO: it conjures up images of bad guys in the Old West. Aiding in this imagery is the fact that the "good guys" in the SEO world are said to use white hat SEO techniques.

While black hat SEO techniques aren't illegal and won't send its users to jail to do hard time, it can result in punishment from Google and other search engines in the form of heavy penalties in search results. Think of Google's rules as if they were your idealist dad. They want you to play by the rules and play fair. While the good guy doesn't always win, Google does its best to increase his odds.

It's likely that you won't "accidentally" employ black hat techniques. But, if you are unaware of some of the ways that can get you admonished by Google, here they are:

Using Invisible Text

This is basically the very definition of deception: using invisible text on your website to spike your keyword numbers. It's also one of the dumbest techniques you can use. People who use invisible text aren't magicians, they just place white text on a white background (or whatever matching colors they want to use). Thing is, it's not like this is some fancy trick Google can't figure out.

Cloaking

Here's another black hat term that just sounds evil: cloaking. Simply put, cloaking is the act of presenting one set of content to your website's visitors and another to search engines. This is most famously done by porn websites. If you do this and get caught, you could get delisted from Google or other search engines.

Keyword Stuffing

There are deceptive or semi-deceptive places you can put keywords in your website design. Google defines keyword stuffing as "The practice of loading a web page with keywords in an attempt to manipulate a site's ranking in Google's search results."

Remember, Google is looking for relevant and quality content to be at the top of their page rankings. That means keyword concentration needs to be monitored and not become so dense as to be unnatural.

Doorway Pages

Doorway pages are a classic bait and switch. In this case, the object is to bait search engines with a page that isn't really meant for the humans who are visiting the site. They are used to target certain keywords.

The more sophisticated method is to have the page automatically redirect viewers so they don't lose interest or get confused.

Spam

Ah, the classic Internet black hat tool. Everyone knows about email spam, but in the SEO world a webmaster may create a worthless page specifically to rank well in the search engines. The website may have a page of ads with the sole purpose of being paid based upon ad impressions. They may also be doing it in the desperate hopes that you will click through to another page.