Black Hat SEO or Search Engine Spamming

There still is no generally accepted definition for black hat SEO.

What may be considered appropriate by one webmaster may not be considered appropriate by another webmaster. Webmasters hold different opinons and guidelines for appropriate conduct change from website category to website category.

Black hat tactics are not considered to be good or fair by search engine operators, search engine optimizers, or web site visitors.

Over the past year we have seen an increase in the use of so called “Black Hat” Search Engine Optimization (SEO) techniques by un-reputable affiliate webmasters and SEO companies.

Automated scripts are now being used in an attempt to gain top rankings in the major search engines. The pursuit of rankings or SERPS is the basic objective of all search engine optimization. “Black Hatters” employ techniques which are designed to gain an unfair advantage through theft of content or to cause harm to competitors.

Many Blackhatters flood the engines with thousands and thousands of websites that are created by programs designed for this. I have heard Black Hatters bragging about creating some 10,000 sites in a couple of days.Some target smaller keywords and their sites may last longer that way. For a while if you typed "Dominique blackjack" or "dominique slots" etc. into google you would get hundreds and hundreds of cloaked sites showing the index page of Piggs Peak Casino. This is where the grey area definitely moves into the black area - when you spam the engines with tens of thousands of sites.

The most used Blackhat methods are:

a) Site Scraping

An automated script performs searches at the major search engines for the keyword terms being targeted. The sites returned during the search are then spidered and replicated at the scrapers site. Generally the generated pages are also cloaked so that casual visitors do not “see” the stolen content. The search engine spiders, however, are served up the replicated pages as “spider food”. This is a terrible practice which not only steals the hard work of honest webmasters, but causes THEM to be penalized by the search engines for Duplicate Content!!!

b) Google Bowling

The Black hatter generates thousands of links to a targeted web site from a site which they have which is banned at Google or Yahoo for previous spamming or bad behavior. Google sees the sudden influx of links from a “Bad Neighborhood” and penalizes the targeted site. The black hatter either hopes this helps them rise in the rankings or they are just being malicious towards a competitor.

c) Cloaking

In cloaking, human visitors are shown the actual web page, but search engines are shown a web page which is full of spammy SEP techniques such as keyword stuffing.

One technique for determing whether a web page uses cloaking is to look at the Google's cache. Unless the web page turned off Google's caching, the cached site will show you how Googlebot sees the page.

You can also download Opera browser and modify your user agent by selecting Tools > Preferences > Network, and then changing the "Browser identification" setting. Now you can see the page as the spiders see it.

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.