Black Hat SEO Techniques

If you work in the SEO industry, it is likely you have encountered black hat SEO methods. For those who perform black hat techniques to manipulate the search engines, the ends justify the means. While most webmasters work hard and struggle to get their sites at the top of the search engines, webmasters who use black hat techniques sit back and relax. It is not uncommon for these webmasters to make $100,000 within three months.

This is the reason why using black hat seo is so appealing. This is also the reason why spammers practice their craft. They do it becaues it works. When you send out a million emails, there is a mathematical probability that you will generate a certain number of responses. Because of this, it is easy to see what motivates those who practice black hat SEO methods. The search engines are forced to constantly change their tactics to fight against these webmasters. If companies like Google didn't take the time to make changes to their algorithms, many webmasters would never be able to get their sites to the top of the search engines.

If you are a webmaster who uses white hat techniques to optimize your site, it can be annoying to see websites rank higher than yours which use black hat techniques. At the same time, it is important to remember that these websites give you a chance to succeed. Most webmasters who use black hat techniques must rely on automated tools to help them. Honest webmasters have to put in a bit of elbow grease. This is where we succeed and those who use black hat techniques fail. Sooner or later, companies like Google will win. At some point in the future, search engines will be governed by strong artificial intelligence. Once this happens, the number of webmasters using black hat technique will be eliminated, or greatly reduced.

It is likely that webmasters who use black hat techniques will never completely vanish. The reason for this is because they are humans who have brains. There will always be someone out there who is clever enough to trick the search engines, no matter how advance they are. As of this time, those of us who use white hat SEO techniques can be content in knowing that the black hatters are making things easier for us.

SEO Types Exposed

Search Engine Optimizers (SEO) can wear many different “hats”. The color of the single hat is determined by the SEO philosophy and the methods, that is used to optimize websites. We usually speak of:

• Black Hat SEO
• White Hat SEO
• Gray Hat SEO

As an affiliate it is important to understand the difference and the risks between the single SEO Hats.

Black Hat SEO

Black Hat SEO is also known as SEO spamming, and is when someone creates websites that have little or no value, that are intended to trick the search engines into offering irrelevant or low-quality search results.

Black Hat SEO will heavily leverage technology and automation in order to create tons of poor quality sites, and gain inbound links from other websites (link spam). Once the visitor has arrived to the website, the owner of the website will often use some kind of cloaking or redirect to show the visitor a sales page of the products, that is the really goal of the Black Hat SEO technique.

Black Hat SEO are all about getting fast results. The method they use to optimize their websites will often get the website to the top of the search engines very rapidly, but when the search engines catch-on, the website will very often crash or get banned.

I do not condone Black Hat SEO for affiliates, because it is very risky SEO business, and it can especially damaging, when it is used on a website, that you have invested heavily resources in.

White Hat SEO

White Hat SEO focus on building quality content first and SEO second. White Hat SEO may use technology and automation to build their websites too, but they use it to accomplish different goals. They write content for people, not search engines. White Hat SEO tend to rely more on their content and marketing skills to achieve a top ranking, rather than automated programs.

White Hat SEO understand that good search engine rankings takes time and don’t try to rush results. White Hat SEO are able to get more inbound links from other websites, because their content is considered valuable. They go by the philosophy CONTENT IS KING.

When you use White Hat SEO tactics you run absolutely no risk of being banned by the search engines and visitors who come to your website will also be more likely to convert.

Gray Hat SEO

A lot of SEO fall into the Gray Hat category, and there are many shades of gray. Some Gray Hat SEO tend to use more questionable tactics and take greater risks. Gray Hat SEO is all about risk versus reward. Some Gray Hat techniques may be frowned by the search engines, but are not necessarily against their rules, while other techniques may be more risky and should be used only after careful consideration.

What SEO hat should you wear ?

The hat that you decide to wear should be determined by your goals and objectives. I would never recommend anybody to use any black hat SEO strategies, because these strategies are short-lived and will almost always get you banned in the search engines.

Everybody should strive to be a white hat SEO and focus on writing quality content. However it may make sense for you in some instances to use Gray Hat SEO tactics to gain a competitive advantage. But when using Gray Hat SEO tactics it is very important, that you measure the risk and reward of each strategy, and determine for yourself, if some of these Gray Hat SEO strategies makes sense for your websites.

But it is important that you never take too big a risk with your most valuable websites, and here it is much more valuable, that you make a more safe and long term SEO strategy for these websites.

Black Hat SEO Vs. White Hat SEO

People often use the terms 'white hat' and 'black hat' in the online work community. What do these terms actually mean though? It's simple really, white hat refers to a practice used in your business practices involving SEO in which you are following the rules and doing nothing sneaky to try to get ahead of your competition. Black hat is, well...the exact opposite. People use black hat techniques to trick customers, search engines, and their competitors. These techniques often get them in some sort of trouble and they are definitely not recommended.

The following is a list of some of the basic white hat and black hat techniques/practices that you want to use or avoid in online work:

White hat techniques-

1) Internal linking - Creating clear and legitimate internal links within sites is very important. Avoid using pictures or logos for internal linking as they cannot be identified by search engine bots, thus not counting as an actual link as far as search engines are concerned. Use text links at the bottom of your homepage, along with a sitemap of your whole site.

2) Content creation - Everyone who has done significant research on SEO knows the importance of good content for a website. Websites rich in unique content are easily crawled by the search engine bots. Content creation should be to the point, unique, have relevant keywords to your niche, and be informative to the reader. Choosing the proper keyword phrase is a must. One must choose specific and relevant keywords and optimize the homepage as well as sub-pages using those keywords.

3) Site optimization - Effective site optimization leads to better website appearance and has a better chance of being found by your potential customers. It covers all important aspects like Meta tags, titles, content, links, etc.

Black hat techniques-

1) Hidden text - Some websites try to fool readers by making text the same font color as your website's background. These websites are easily caught by their competitors and often search bots will recognize this as well, and the site will get blacklisted. Not a smart tactic since it is easily found by someone who knows what to look for.

2) Stuffing keywords into your content - This is the most common and most used black hat SEO technique. In this case the website owner will insert a large amounts of keywords or phrases repeatedly without having any relevant meaning. This will result in sentences that make very little sense, and again can be caught very easily.

3) Doorway pages - It is very dangerous to insert a doorway page, simply to target specific keywords or phrases. This has little or no value to the user and thus only hurts you.

4) Duplicate sites - Some webmasters create duplicate sites of their original site for website promotion purposes. They think that their new site can outrank their old one. This is simply not the case and it is a very banned practice.

5) Cloaking - This method refers to the use of many black hat SEO techniques simultaneously for submitting varied information to search engines, which are invisible to the visitors. They sometimes go undetectable but can be identified by the competitors, and will result in the banning of the website by most, if not all search engines.

6) Interlinking - These are multiple websites that are interlinked to each other for link popularity. This is a rather difficult technique to be detected, but it is definitely not recommended.

In the end all reliable and genuine online work companies practice white hat SEO techniques that have long-term positive outcomes. Black hat SEO can get your some quick traffic to begin with, but in the end it will only end up hurting you.