Black Hat in the Casino Gambling Industry

a) Casinos that hire and allow black-hat tactics.

These casinos and programs employ short-term business strategy to the detriment of long-term profitability. By employing and allowing these tactics to generate short-term results and income, they jeopardize their long-term profitability and credibility in the process. This strategy may produce short-term income, but there overall reputation in the marketplace becomes tainted because they leave the impression that they are not reputable. If they are not adverse to cheating the search engines, than what prevents them from cheating their players too? While no one has come out openly to accuse certain programs of unfair competition with their own affiliates by employing blackhatters to flood the engines with their ads, many affiliates have quietly removed the offending programs from their sites. If you are one of them, and after the short surge of income from blackhat methods you saw your profits dip lower than ever, that's why.

b) Affiliate programs in Collusion

Affiliate programs need to demand a strict compliance to integrity as it relates to SEO practices, or the reputation and long-term viability of the casinos they represent will eventually sacrifice their position in the marketplace.

When casino affiliate companies do not specifically penalize and have rules against these types of practices by their affiliates,they are in collusion and face negative actions by the injured white hat affiliates and the players who grow annoyed at seeing the same casino index page everyplace they click to get information about a gambling related topic that interests them.

c) Opinions of fellow Programs

One Affiliate manager I spoke to said that he thinks that the whole recent mess with affiliate programs breaching contracts had partially to do with them losing lots of money to Search engine spammers. He says he considers the breaches unethical and his program has refrained from such measures, but he can also feel the pinch the breaching programs feel. Casinos are used to periodically dominating the large search terms - gambling, online casinos and the like. Most of the time these terms are now dominated by black hat spam. He blames a few programs which have either purchased sets of Black Hat sites for their own advertising use, or who have turned a blind eye to affiliates employing these methods. He says they are partially responsible for the current contraction in the market. For a short term profit, as all blackhat successes are shortlived, they have sacrificed the reputation of the industry and caused condiderable financial damage to other industry members.

Affiliates will add that these programs are in unfair competition with their own affiliates - demonstrating a total disregard towards their own sales force.

Black Hat Marketing Series

1. What is Black Hat SEO
   How to identify black hat search engine optimization and how to avoid it.
2. Grey Hat is the Old Black Hat
   What SEO tactics used widely in the past by Webmasters, have now lost their usefulness.
3. It's a Search Engine Optimization Jungle Out There
   SEO schemes and scams to be knowledgeable and aware of, so you do not get taken advantage of.
4. Black Hat SEO or Search Engine Spamming
   SEO schemes and scams to be knowledgeable and aware of, so you do not get taken advantage of.
5. Black Hat in the Gambling Industry
   SEO schemes and scams to be knowledgeable and aware of, so you do not get taken advantage of.
6. Are YOU Being Negatively Affected by Black Hat Site
   SEO schemes and scams to be knowledgeable and aware of, so you do not get taken advantage of.
7. Why not use white hat SEO?
   SEO schemes and scams to be knowledgeable and aware of, so you do not get taken advantage of.