September 4th, 2010 by Susie
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) has been practiced, to varying degrees of complexity since the mid-1990s. It started modestly with optimising site titles for the directory based search engine Yahoo, developing in to the sophisticated range of SEO services on offer today.
However, as the SEO industry has become both more competitive, it has developed something of a “dark side”. This takes the form of promotional practices which give sites an unfair advantage, whilst also cluttering the web with copious amounts of “junk” content. Such practices are known as “black hat SEO”.
Here is some information on certain “black hat” SEO practices, to help you steer clear of them should they ever be proposed to you.
The first dubious technique is artificially to create hundreds, possibly thousands of web pages, even whole websites, which link to the site being marketed. The purpose is to increase the page rank of that site by boosting the number of back links it receives. The more cunning practitioners of this “web page spamming” can create such bogus content using scripts, so no human intervention or effort is required. If you visit any popular blogging portal you will inevitably come across some examples of these bogus pages. They will contain plugs for one or more sites, but lack any holistic meaning. However, the major search engines have now got wind of this scam, and have subtle methods for unearthing it. The sites being promoted in this way then get penalised, sometimes heavily, in the search engine rankings – the exact opposite effect to the one intended.
Another black hat technique, now outdated, but worth being aware of is “cloaking”. This is the use of white text on a white background to pack a site with promotional content. Users can’t see the words but search engine crawlers can still pick them up. The site retains a veneer of legitimacy but is busy plugging itself in the background.
Some black hat practitioners don’t bother to conceal their marketing keywords. Instead they use a method called “keyword stuffing”, whereby the keyword tag on a web page is blitzed with ostensibly essential keywords. Keywords may also clog other parts of the page, such as the body content, ultimately detracting from its meaning, and overwhelming the user. These days, this practice is also likely to send the promoted site plummeting in the rankings. Search engine tools are increasingly attuned to such overkill tactics.
Finally, steer well clear of “doorway pages”. These are pages stacked with search engine fodder, but not meaningful to users. Such pages, when accessed, immediately redirect to a more meaningful page so users never really catch site of them. However, despite this search engines will still pick them up eventually and the site will then be penalised.
Such underhand bogus pages are not recommended, and undermine such professional search engine optimisation services as those we offer here at searchengineoptimsation.com. We practice scrupulous and content-rich search engine marketing services, and steer well clear of black hat practices.
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