Grey Hat is the Old Black Hat

There are a number of practices that many affiliates have used at one point, and years ago it was considered Blackhat. It mostly falls in a grey area now, and I personally haven't found any of these techniques to be useful at all in the long run. I did try some of them on some small sites. While once in a while one of these sites ranked well, it was always for a very short time. Frankly, this is too much work for little reward for me.

a) Keyword Stuffing

Keyword stuffing is when you load a Web page up with keywords in the Meta tags or on the Web page's content. Usually people repeat the same word over and over again in the Meta tags, which is why many search engines don't look at the Meta tags anymore. It's also done on the page with text people see - visitors must think the owners of these sites are retarded.

If the word is repeated too much it will raise a red flag to the search engines and they will probably put a Spam filter on the offending Web site.

b) Invisible Text

Invisible text: This is putting lists of keywords in white text on a white background in hopes of attracting more spiders.

Search engines consider this spam and penalize it.

c) Link Farming

This is a group of web pages which share links with one another, or a directory which requires reciprocal links.

Link farm is a term which is generally used in a negative context and link farming is considered by many to be a black hat technique.

There is much talk about the major search engines penalizing link farms, although there is no hard proof.

d) Doorway Pages

Doorway pages are very optimized for just one search phrase. These will redirect the visitor to another web page.

Doorway pages are considered bad SEO by many people because they insert an annoying and unnecessary step between the user and the destination.

Google's statement on doorway pages is:

Avoid "doorway" pages created just for search engines, or other "cookie cutter" approaches such as affiliate programs with little or no original content.

e) Link Spamming

Link spam (also called blog spam, spamdexing or comment spam) is a form of spamming we have all heard about when it's targeting weblogs (or blogs), but also affects wikis (where it is often called wikispam), guestbooks, and online discussion boards. Any web application that displays hyperlinks submitted by visitors or the referring URLs of web visitors may be a target.

Link spamming appeared in guestbooks quite some time ago. Spammers would fill a guestbook with links to their own site to increase search engine rankings.

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.