Search engine optimization is a bit of an art, but SEO, like art, has its good and bad practitioners; I am writing today about “Black-Hat” SEO techniques since many of my client’s existing websites once had these frowned upon techniques (before I remove them of course), and a few clients have been contacted by email or have found online one of the many self-titled “SEO experts” who promises to get their site top ranked on the search engines.
* note: I receive unsolicited emails most every day from the numerous self-titled “SEO Experts” that promises to get my website on the first page of Google. I always have to smile at this because I am ranked #1 or #2 for most relevant queries on Google. Next I examine the email and in almost all cases there is not a phone number or website provided; of course any legit company would include their complete contact information. And for those few who do provide a website, their sites are always poorly built, with no case studies showing the success of their technique…nothing but promises!
Ok, so that being said, the primary determinants of a technique being Black-Hat are that it:
- breaks search engine rules and regulations
- creates a poor user experience directly because of the Black-Hat SEO techniques utilized on the website
- unethically presents content in a different visual or non-visual way to search engine spiders and search engine users.
First, let’s be clear, yes, sometimes the Black-Hat techniques work (and many were considered legit in the past). They work for a while that is, then eventually the search engines get savvy, upgrade their ranking algorithm, and so on; and guess what? Your site will suddenly plummet in the rankings, and in many cases your site will get banned from the search engines completely. For this reason, why take the risk, I wouldn’t. Ok, so following are the primary Black-Hat techniques, and how to identify if the SEO person you’ve hired is doing this to your own website.
Black-Hat search engine optimization is customarily defined as techniques that are used to get higher search rankings in an unethical manner. These Black-Hat SEO techniques usually include one or more of the following characteristics:
1. Hidden Content (by using acceptable tags)
Hidden content comes in many guises but the basic principle is that within the code of the site there will be keyword rich content that will not be visible to a site visitor. One way of doing this is by using comment tags.
<!– Comment Tag –> The purpose of comment tags is for developers to add in useful reminders within their code explaining what that piece of code does, such as:
<body><!–The body section starts here –>
In Black-Hat this tag will be stuffed, as follows: <!— widgets, our widgets, best widgets, top widgets, free widgets, cheap widgets, … etc –->
The use of the <noscript> tag is another way to hide content. The <noscript> tag is used to inform a user that a script is being used but their browser doesn’t support the language, or they have that function turned off (typically used for javascript and flash).
Here’s an example of the <noscript> tag being used as a Black-Hat SEO technique:
<noscript>Our widgetized widgets are the best, our widgets are cheap, our widgets are free, buy our widgets at ourwidgetcompany.com, I love widgets.</noscript>
And then we have <noframes> tags which are used to display content when the ability to view a frameset is not possible. Yes, the Black-Hat folks will apply the keyword content there as well, which is not what this tag is for.
2. Hidden Content (by using by using CSS)
The most common way, the one the search engines will likely catch and penalize you on is adding text that is very small (say 1px) and/or adding text that is the same color as the background (white text on white background, etc).
The less common way, yet has become increasingly popular is to add text to a page in a tag (such as a paragraph or div) and then attach an ID or class to it that makes the text hidden.
And maybe most troubling is that there is the practice of adding a large block of text to a page, and then using css to position it outside the screen view. For example, one could use absolute positioning and add a negative value of say -5000, and like magic, the text can’t be seen, but yes, it’s readable by the engines. This one would be challenging for the search engines to detect as Black-Hat since many of the advanced menu systems and AD scripts will place content off the screen until it is called in some way. A White Hat example is when you see a small button on the side of your screen that says “contact us”, and upon click the window opens with a contact form in it.
Another related Black-Hat technique is to use z-index to place text content below an image, so while only the image shows, there is indexable text beneath.
3. Meta Keyword Stacking
Meta keyword stacking refers to using the titles, keywords, and description tags in a way where keywords are repeated often.
Meta Description: The meta description should be a brief description (two or three sentences) describing the services of your business/organization.
A Black-Hat approach for this would look like: <meta name=”description” content=”Our Widget company has the best widgets, free widgets, cheap widgets, widgets, low cost widgets, all widgets, commercial widgets” />
The reality is that the description here does not provide a readable description of this widget business. In the same way the “Meta Keywords” tag is used to repeat the keywords over and over, and again, and while this may work in the short-term, it is likely that eventually this will either not benefit your business at all (being provide no weight by the search engine bots) or it will hurt your ranking, and either lower it or get you banned.
The “Title” of the pages (also a meta tag) is often used by the Black-Hat seo crowd to spam, again, not a good practice.
4. Doorway / Gateway Pages
Doorway or Gateway pages are designed for search engines and not for the end user. They create fake pages that are stuffed with content and highly optimized for 1 or 2 keywords that link to a target or landing page. If one visits one of these pages they will be redirected to the actual website. Know that this was a common practice in the past, and there are still some SEO software that provides this functionality, as well as the self-titled seo experts who don’t know what they’re talking about. Search engine spiders are being enhanced continually to detect these pages so avoid this practice.
5. Indiscriminate Link Farming
Link farming comes in two basic types: There is the free for all (FFA) pages that have no other purposes than to list links of unrelated websites. Some of these may provide you traffic, but it is important to note that if you are linked to a site that has a bad “spam” reputation, then the link won’t benefit you, it will in fact hurt you. The other type of link farming is when you add your link to as many websites as you can (often by doing a reciprocal link exchange) even though they do not provide relational services.
6. Duplicate Websites
Some designers will create a copy of the site that was being promoted by affiliate programs, and put it online in hopes that it would outrank the site it was promoting and capture their sales. In other cases one will create near duplicate versions of their business website in the hope of improving their search engine presence. well, the first is just unethical since it is never appropriate to copy another’s website content and code. The second situation is understandable in part, it is after all your site content, but know that the search engines frown on duplicate content no matter what its source. A near duplicate of your existing site will in most cases lower the ranking of both.
7. Interlinking
Interlinking is the practice of linking phrases to your site pages (innerlinks) and to other websites which you own (outerlinks). On the surface it is fine if used correctly, but this technique can be over used, and used to link to unrelated site content (the problem of course). The practice in effect (though often hidden by the SEO crowd) is to title your links with keyword phrasing and use title tags to make the link seem relevant so it gets indexed.
Ok, so you’ve evaluated your top-ranked competition and you can tell that they are using some of the aforementioned techniques, what do you do? Well, you can always report them. From my experience every major search engine/directory has a department for feedback, and some have links specifically for “spam” abuse. Google, for example, has this page, which provides you a link for just this purpose: https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/spamreport?hl=en
