Black Hat SEO: Avoid 6 tactics to not get banned from SE
Most of webmasters do know the importance of having high search engine rankings. High rankins means high traffic, translated into increased profit.. Webmasters look for all sorts of tactics to improve a website’s position in search results.. However you need to avoid some tactics, generraly termed Black Hat SEO, because it may cause a website to be penalized/Banned from search engines.
So below are the six popular Black Hat search engine optimization tactics:
1. Keyword Stuffing:
The more often you use your keywords on a page, the higher you keyword density. However, search engines don’t look for exceptionally high keyword density, but reasonable keyword density. If you repeat your keywords too often, search engines might think that your website is spamming.
2. Cloaking
Cloaking is when websites serve one web page to search engine spiders and a different to human visitors. This can be used to mislead the search engine with regard to the content on the website.
There are, however, some methods of cloaking which are not regarded as a deceptive, such as delivering unique content to users based on their location, or allowing search engines to index password protected pages.
3. Hidden Text
Another method of deceiving search engines with regard to a website’s content is by including hidden text. Text can be rendered invisible by setting it as the same color as the background, using negative margins, or placing it in an invisible containing element.
4. Gateway Pages
Sometimes additional websites or web pages are created with the sole purpose of ranking highly in search engines and generating traffic for another website. If these pages provide no value to visitors and are only used for rankings, your website may be penalized.
5. URL Redirection
This occurs when a user, or search engine, is unknowingly redirected to another website. Sometimes this practice is used to acquire the pagerank of the destination page. At other times, it is used to redirect users to a malicious website.
6. Link Farms
Google Pagerank and other similar ranking algorithms for other search engines place a lot of weight on link popularity. Black Hat search engine optimizers often take advantage of this by creating something known as a link farm, which is consists of a community of websites which link to each other.
Search engines have gotten progressively smarter in their quest to deliver highly relevant search results. So even if these tactics give you some success, it will only be temporary and could result in an indefinite ban of your domain name.
This entry was posted on Saturday, August 23rd, 2008 at 12:33 pm and is filed under SEO Techniques. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
August 23rd, 2008 at 1:32 pm
Nice tips in how to use the BLACK HAT SEO. But i think using more keywords of the site can also spam with the search engine. and in addition on hidden text we can use CSS for making the keyword hidden.
What do you think about traffic exchange? Is that one of the black hat seo? I think it can also penalized your website if you participate on that.
August 24th, 2008 at 12:45 am
I just got hit by something different, I’ve kept all my strategies white-hat but it seems like one of my URLs got banned from just one keyword search because I was ranking too high too quickly!
August 24th, 2008 at 2:34 pm
Thanks for the points. I have been into two of these points, will stop doing it now.
August 27th, 2008 at 8:35 am
It’s familiar to me ,but it’s very useful tips,thanks for your sharing.
August 30th, 2008 at 10:16 pm
thanks for this im new to seo and didnt realise that i had done this without knowing, i have changed my index page but will have to change the rest of the site tomorrow.
thanks once again
August 31st, 2008 at 7:07 am
I dont do black hat but it’s good to know some techniques so I can prevent other from doing it.
September 1st, 2008 at 2:11 am
Good information for sure. Google rankings seems to be a very difficult thing to figure out. One day you\’re on top and the next…maybe not.
September 1st, 2008 at 5:59 am
Ohh thanks for the nice info.. but i hav a question on point no 5.. 302 and 301 redirects can ban my sites?
IITJEE Preparation
September 1st, 2008 at 12:29 pm
Well I call such lists as YAGGR..Yet another Google Guidelines Re-write. Well, Those are basics, Most of these have become obsolete now a days, and things are pretty much advanced now a days like Page Hijack, SQL Injection, XSS Injections Scripts etc..So perhaps above said will never work, however, advanced one’s do work and I know such sites working well, just that google now a days, Puts this under such Websites “This Site can Harm your computer” So all BH is BS. No Bickering!
Content + Links = Good SERPS*
*Conditions Apply
September 2nd, 2008 at 4:19 am
Thank you for the overview. These are definitely the main options as far as driving traffic to your site, but there are always more black hat techniques out there. Of course, if you don’t know what they are, you can’t be hurt by them. But if you do some of these discretely or in moderation, they can be used to give yourself a small boost.
September 4th, 2008 at 12:24 pm
Good infomation.
Google is hard to predict.
One day you at the top
Next you will fall
The higher you climb the bigger the fall, they say
September 4th, 2008 at 4:05 pm
Thanks for that. But its really link farm really dangerous? Ehm..how about if we use digg and entrecard?
September 6th, 2008 at 1:05 am
Yes, link farms are really that dangerous. I believe this was one of the reasons why one of my sites got banned. At the time i did not know they were not a good idea.
What is classed as a “resonable density” (for keywords)
September 10th, 2008 at 4:39 am
Absolutely great tips ..I always use White hat techniques …Which helps me to get more traffic …And good back links
September 10th, 2008 at 6:27 pm
Great tips! Now, a common question that I’m asked is - how do you tell the difference between a link directory and a “link farm”? Do we know how Google determines whether a site is a legitimate directory? Thank you again.
September 15th, 2008 at 1:15 pm
I knew about most of these already, except for gateway. It rather worries me though, it seems as though Google is taking away from smaller websites with all these strict policies. I for one don\’t like too many strict policies. I see it just getting stricter, most people think this is here to help you out. But sometimes it can hurt you.
September 21st, 2008 at 7:31 pm
Good to know. but url redirection at least 301 and 302 are actualy incuraged by google, in certain situations.
September 22nd, 2008 at 6:52 am
Great post…A little hard to read with some of the weird characters that didn’t transfer well, but other then that I enjoyed the brief quotes form the interview.
September 30th, 2008 at 6:42 am
Interesting information. I was wondering whether linking to too many other websites will also affect getting banned from Google. Is it right?
October 2nd, 2008 at 5:15 am
Nice Post. Nice info Given but In URL Redirection 301 and 302 is Good For site or not because of I heard that using 301 and 302. The Google is not penalized It’s right or wrong?
October 2nd, 2008 at 11:49 am
One more thing should be added - guys, avoid duplicated content. Ten unique articles on ten unique IPs will give you more value than one article submitted to 1000s of blogs.
October 6th, 2008 at 8:33 am
yes keyword stuffing and hidden text is bad technique for seo
thankx for giving such nice information about black hat seo…
October 9th, 2008 at 8:50 pm
This is very useful thank you. This is good practice and something all webmasters should follow.
October 16th, 2008 at 9:16 am
Nice Post. I am new here but will be visiting more often as you have done a good job.
I consider your effort for this article is indeed valuable. Its well researched, well portrayed and well formated informative content.
I really appreciate the work. Keep it up…..
October 26th, 2008 at 6:48 pm
Great points - however people using most of these are trying to practice SEO that is years out of date!
November 5th, 2008 at 2:00 pm
Good infomation.
Thanks
November 20th, 2008 at 5:44 am
very interesting tips. thanks
November 20th, 2008 at 5:45 am
great, very useful tips
November 24th, 2008 at 11:25 pm
Thanks for this!
I made the mistake of “keyoword stuffing”. I used to think the more the better
December 1st, 2008 at 1:51 am
well i did some mistakes thou..great information here. big help and gained me xtra knowledge on SEO.. thanks again.
December 1st, 2008 at 12:39 pm
Avoiding link farms is a big one. It is actually fairly easy to accidently get connected with one site that is participating in this and some SEs see this as guilty by association.