How To Get Blacklisted By The Search Engines: Black Hat Techniques

Black Hat SEO is a real problem as more and moreby the search engines. Usually found written in a tiny
SEO companies are set up every day. Just as afont size at the bottom of a web page in order for the
reminder, Black Hat SEO is to be opposed to Whitemain content to make sense.
Hat SEO. Black Hat search engine optimization can beLink farms
defined as the practice of using unethical techniques toLink farms have evolved from the strategy of building
make your search rankings go up.inbound links in order to raise search engine rankings.
Here is a list of the bad techniques that would get youSites have been built specifically to provide links, which
blacklisted by the search engines.are not particularly relevant to the site concerned.
CloakingSearch engines expect links between websites to be
As a general rule, websites designed for ease of usebased on relevant content. Sites that build links of no
by visitors will attract search engine spiders. Thatrelevance, purely for the sake of search engine
doesn't stop some less than reputable individuals fromoptimisation, can be banned from search engines,
disguising their pages in an attempt to gain an unfairmaybe for life.
advantage. What you see is most definitely not whatDoorway Pages
you get.Probably the easiest way to get blacklisted and lose
The information presented to the search engine is noteven genuinely earned rankings, doorway pages are
the same that the human visitor gets to see. Oneappended to a website, giving no value to a visitor. The
example is to put in some text the same colour as thepage exists solely to attract search engines to the
background. In this way, the spiders but not the humantargeted keyword or phrase. These pages are usually
eye can pick up keywords. This enables the websitemass-produced and posted automatically by software.
owner to present well written content but give theRedirects
search engine the impression that the copy is filled withUsed in connection with doorways, redirects
keywords, thereby attracting searches for thoseautomatically move the visitor to a genuine page. Illegal
keywords.methods are constantly being devised to beat
Rest assured though, that if the offending site wereattempts by search engines to detect this practice.
holding a high search engine position, it would beThe search engines do generally catch up with them
spotted, reported and banned from search engines.and ban the sites. If not, competitors do pick up what's
Duplicate Sitesgoing on and report the offenders.
Search engines would prefer to find unique contentWhat colour is your hat?
throughout the net. When affiliate schemes firstMany of these practices are blatantly in use today.
became popular, some web owners would postSome webmasters tread the thin line between illegality
duplicate sites in an attempt to outrank the site beingand shady practices. Search engine rankings can still
promoted and siphon off sales from the original.be achieved by operating a "black hat" strategy.
Subsequently, the search engines now haveGenerally though, any gain is at best temporary and
procedures in place to stop duplicate sites. Sites thatoffenders do face the prospect of being blacklisted by
may have been altered slightly to avoid detection canthe search engines. SEO agencies that operate
be spotted by competitors, reported and banned.legitimately and provide good seo services, will not
Keyword Stuffingtolerate competitors getting an unfair advantage and
The easiest to spot and most common example ofwill report offenders. Some bans can be permanent,
"black hat" methods, keyword stuffing relies onbut even in cases where a site is only banned for a
targeted keywords being placed en masse on a webtemporary period; it is increasingly difficult to get back
page in the anticipation of being picked up and indexedup the ladder.