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Black Hat SEO – What It Means

| June 10, 2010 | 33 Comments More

So what is this mysterious wonder of the universe?  Do we know what it is and what we need to be careful of?  Are there any particular techniques that we should avoid, or be wary of?  And is there anything that I have been told that sounds legitimate, when in fact it isn’t and they just confuse me with long pointless words?

Well hopefully this post will help to answer some of these questions for you, and help to unravel the still very young market that is SEO!  Because this Industry is so young people still do their best to take advantage of it, and it doesn’t help that it is the fastest growing Industry in the world either.  Everyone is jumping on the band wagon, which means that there will be more and more people out there doing their best to get your cash!

What Is Black Hat SEO?

  • Basically it is a way of optimizing your website using tools and methods that are frowned upon by Search Engines.  Generally speaking Black hat SEO is tricking Search Engines into believing your site should rank for a term that it may not really deserve.

What to watch out for:

  • Cloaking:  A very old and one of the first forms of Black Hat SEO.  It’s a very simple way to build up PageRank quickly, but you can get spotted very fast as well.  Simply speaking you redirect your website to one that is much more powerful that yours.  When you redirect your site to one like the BBC or Google itself, it looks as though your website is one of these more powerful sites and you inherit there Pagerank, at least until the next Pagerank update!  Only problem is that you can get caught very easily, these Search Engine Bots will work out, that this is not your site, and most likely Ban you from the entire Search Engine.  This can take months to repair.  Just watch out for those slick salesmen that promise you a PR of 8 in 2 weeks!  Importantly, there are different kinds of “Cloaking” where simply speaking text is hidden from the visible eye, but read by Google!
  • Parasite Hosting:  This is also quite an old technique, but is still in regular use.  Basically this is a way of building trust and power to your site by redirecting hundreds of other domains to your single site.  It is surprisingly quite cheap and can work very quickly, however having so many domains redirected to your own can be easily spotted and usually ends up in some form of penalisation.
  • Link Farming: A pretty basic and self explanatory subject, but I am going to bore you anyway!  Basically this is where you receive links from a whole host of pages that have one single purpose only; to provide links to websites.  They are a complete waste of time, and they are very easy for Google to spot.  Generally speaking they link between each other as well, so that power can be easily passed, increasing their PR, which then means they can charge more!

P.S: This post has only been posted for educational purposes. Black Hat SEO methods are really not recommended and these kind of techniques can lead to Google Penalties and bans

Author Bio

This is a guest post by Mark C. Mark C is a White Hat SEO that works for a Web Design company in connection with a USA holidays tour operator!

If you would also liked to guest post on Netchunks – a PR3, Alexa = 37,600 Site then Please Check our Write for Us Page

Category: SEO

About the Author (Author Profile)

Without sounding to Corny - Mark C helps out where he can with any SEO issues around the web! The #1 Hurstpierpoint SEO, Follow Mark on Twitter if you want to know more: Marcus SEO

Comments (33)

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  1. Siva says:

    can you spot some software that does Black SEO. bcoz, generally i see many Link building software there on many website and advertisement, so it would help me to avoid them .
    Siva recently posted..Google I/O: SEO expert adviceMy Profile

    • Shiva Chettri
      Twitter:
      says:

      There are many softwares for blackhat seo like XRumer, Autoblog tools, AutoComment tools etc. Just do a quick search with theses keywords in Google, you will come across them

  2. TechChunks says:

    And if you are doing anything out of these you are sure to be doomed soon! Great post.
    TechChunks recently posted..Star Wars iPad Briefing [Video]My Profile

  3. Gagan says:

    Even invisible text is considered as an black hat SEO technique. Suppose we have white background, so creating a hyperlink with same white color so as to hide it to the human visitors is known as invisible text.
    Gagan recently posted..Perform These 4 Tasks & Increase Subscribers To Your Blog : Must ReadMy Profile

  4. Chethan says:

    Don’t you think bloggers are inclined to ‘Link Farming’ not directly but still??
    Chethan recently posted..New iPhone app, Pepsi Loot. Get freebies for an entry in restaurants!My Profile

  5. Martin says:

    When does a directory become a link farm? Many directories look like link farms yet they have not been penalised by Google. :D
    Martin recently posted..Leveraging Twitter for Search TrafficMy Profile

    • Shiva Chettri
      Twitter:
      says:

      Lol, Martin, You are right on that point. But the main difference between directories and Link farms are that in directories the links are categorized under many different categories but in Link farm they are not categories, they are just bunch of links with no categorization

  6. I didn’t know about Parasite Hosting before. You have covered Black Hat SEO clearly. Well presented.
    Mukundan Srinivasan recently posted..SEO : Optimizing Internal LinksMy Profile

  7. Tek3D says:

    Besides of these, there are tons of black hat SEO techniques out there, we just need to avoid them. Those techiques can not be used to develope a website in long term.
    Tek3D recently posted..Content Marketing ExplainedMy Profile

    • Shiva Chettri
      Twitter:
      says:

      Yes Tek3D there are many other Black hat SEO techniques that have not been included here and yes, all those techniques should be avoided

  8. P.K.ARUN
    Twitter:
    says:

    I don’t know about these terms, but I heared Cloaking but don’t know what it’s perfactly. Know I came to what it means thanks.
    P.K.ARUN recently posted..Google replayed to Steve Jobs!My Profile

  9. Sourish says:

    wow , didnt know about the first one , cloaking . nice idea :P

  10. shashank
    Twitter:
    says:

    hmm..
    thru this blog i got to know much more than what i knew abt B’ SEO,
    thnx 4 same :)
    shashank recently posted..Blogger Template Designer Now Available To EveryoneMy Profile

  11. Review Kita says:

    What mean of the parasite hosting is like blogname.blogspot.com or blogname.wordpress.com?
    Thank’s a lot ^^
    Review Kita recently posted..Jangan Terlalu Banyak Memasang Link di Dalam BlogMy Profile

  12. Parasite hosting is used by even legitimate sites.

    My sister’s blog was attacked and all her traffic was transferred to a legitimate newspaper site. This was done via corruption of codes on a WordPress free theme. We found out later that the free themes tend to have this problem.
    Money and Risk recently posted..Fire Your SEO People TodayMy Profile

  13. Some seo experts charge top dollars for website optimization.`,.

  14. Jess Echavez says:

    Black Hat SEO will only make you rank at the first days and then doom you forever. Your efforts will just be wasted then.
    Jess Echavez recently posted..Finding Hip Hop Mix PodcastsMy Profile

  15. Paul from Sytek MN Directory says:

    I know its not right but I actually tried black hat SEO out of curiosity. Some of my friends did it before and they got around $800+ from adsense. However, when Google found out about this habit, their sites were banned and never got ranked ever again.

    Black Hat SEO helps you get money the easy way but you will never enjoy long term earnings out from the investment you put on the line with your online endeavor.

    Thanks for the post Shiva :)

  16. snipzers says:

    It’s just like one day millionaire and being beggar for a lifetime if you get caught. Thanks for the post…

  17. Joshua Brown says:

    seo experts are really modern day geniuses`~,

  18. you can become an SEO Expert by just studying those tips from SEO Forums and testing the methods with yourself.:”

  19. i admire top seo experts because they earn top dollars in just a matter of hours ‘*:

  20. Jane Araguel from Emerald Shores real estate says:

    Some say that Black hat techniques are effective in ranking your site. Sometimes it would only take a month or two to see good results but you have to accept the consequences whenever search engine will caught you. I prefer white hat methods and my favorite is article marketing. I manually submit articles to article directory site and i always make sure the article has a good content that gives valuable information to your readers.

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