What is Black Hat SEO?

Black Hat SEO tactics are practices used by unethical SEO companies, and online marketing sites to trick search engines into giving them a higher ranking than they deserve. Black Hat SEO delivers fast results, but is ultimately very bad news for the users. So why is Black Hat SEO frowned upon, if it works (albeit temporarily)? Black Hat tactics are considered unethical, because they almost always break the rules of search engines. In addition to that, sites that use Black Hat SEO techniques make for a near universally bad user experience. There also some pretty severe repercussions for using Black Hat techniques. When search engines discover that these methods are being used, they will often block those sites from search results, rendering the site essentially useless.

Some SEO companies, particularly many in India and Pakistan, use Black Hat SEO techniques to deliver results to clients, and then disappear when the site is blacklisted, pocketing their money. These techniques are also used by some affiliate marketing sites, as well as sites that host ads. The intent is to drive people to the site, where the only relevant information is in clickable ads. These internet marketers will then abandon or sell these sites when the search engines blacklist them. Most Black Hat SEO is done through software, so be wary of any SEO company that uses software to post articles or create links for you. There are legitimate programs to assist in SEO, so don’t jump to conclusions, just be ready to ask a lot of questions.

So what are the most popular Black Hat SEO techniques? Well, there are plenty, and more are created every day, but here are some of the most commonly used Black Hat SEO tactics:

Link Farming – Link farming happens when a group of websites all hyperlink to one another, with no regard for relevancy. This can be done manually, but is most often accomplished through software designed for the purpose. This also happens with blogs, which is called blog farming.

Invisible text – invisible text is meant only to be read by search engine spiders. It’s often white text on a white background, stuffed with keywords.

Keyword Stuffing – Keyword stuffing occurs when a block of text is filled only with keywords, and little else. Whenever an SEO company creates copy for your website, take a look at the keyword density. Your copy should be natural and comfortable to read, not full of awkwardly phrased keywords.

Fake Pages (Doorway Pages) – Doorway pages exist only for search engine spiders. They are never meant to be seen by the site’s user. They are often fake articles, filled with nonsense text.

So, Black Hat SEO is simply not SEO just as spam email isn’t really email.  The sources of these techniques are just trying to take advantage of the ignorant (unaware).  Do you really need to know these techniques as to whether or not someone is White Hat or Black Hat?  No.  All you have to do is use a very simple set of criteria for selecting an SEO Company.

Live Results / Deep Results – when you are interviewing an Internet Marketing Company, you must see live and “deep” results for existing clients.  Live results is simply going to Google, entering a keyword provided by the company and verifying first page results for one of their clients.  Verify that the client is actually a client usually by seeing the Internet Marketing Company’s name in the footer on the home page.  Deep Results is the high ranking for many keywords for the same client … and … the keywords are at least moderately competitive (more than 250,000 competing pages).  Then get the same quality results for other clients and verify them live right in front of you from Google searches.

Existing Client Interviews – you must actually interview 1-3 clients, not only to verify the results, but to gauge the ranking the client gives to the SEM.  What are your experiences with the SEM?  How are they to work and collaborate with?  Are you planning on renewing their services?  Have you recommended their services before?  What improvements would you like to see from the SEM?  Don’t ask yes or no questions.  You won’t get the information you need.  Ask questions that require thought and listen, not only to what they say, but also how they say it.

“Black Hatters” can’t show you Live / Deep Results and they can’t provide you a number of existing clients that can confirm real bottom line results.  Without conducting some basic due diligence, you are just talking to a voice on the phone.