Papers & Articles

01/02/2007  |  What is Black Hat SEO

Black Hat search engine optimization is defined as techniques that are used to get higher search rankings in an unethical manner. It is the opposite of “White Hat” SEO. These black hat SEO techniques usually include one or more of the following characteristics:

• Breaks search engine rules.
• Creates a poor user experience directly because of the black hat SEO techniques utilised on the Website.
• Unethically presents content in a different visual or non-visual way to search engine spiders and search engine users.

A "Black Hat" search engine optimisation company will use a largely technology driven approach and often ignore the terms of service.

"Artificial SEO" firms will allow a company to leave its website exactly as it is, because the work that such firms do is mainly technical and is designed to trick the engine into showing content that it would not otherwise. Certainly, there are acceptable (from the engine's standpoint) technical aspects that any good search engine optimisation company will use, such as relevant page titles and meta tags. But there are many more unacceptable technical methodologies than acceptable ones, including cloaking, redirects, multiple sites, keyphrase stuffing, hidden links, doorway pages, invisible text and numerous others. A company practicing "organic SEO" or “White Hat” techniques will avoid these.

As any search engine optimization company knows, inbound links are critical to the success of an "organic SEO" campaign. But there are different ways to go about it. Firms that practice true "organic SEO" will look at the website itself and say "how can we make this site something that other sites would want to link to?" A search engine optimisation company using "artificial SEO" will ask "how can I get links pointing to this site without adding anything of value to it?" The latter approach usually leads to link farms, the purchase of text links, and more - anything save for making changes to the website that entice others to link to the site without the link being reciprocated, without paying the website owner.

After all, Black Hat SEO can be tempting, as all these tricks actually work… temporarily. They do end up getting sites higher search rankings; that is, until these same sites get banned for using unethical practices. It is just not worth the risk.