subject: Why I Dislike Black Hat SEO [print this page] One of the biggest controversies in the online marketing world is "Black Hat SEO". In a nutshell, these are methods some online marketers use to fool the search engines into ranking their pages highly.Several examples of black hat SEO include keyword stuffing, cloaking, and bait and switch page swapping.Keyword stuffing is when keywords are overused on a page and make absolutely no sense to the reader. I'm sure you have come across this common black hat method numerous times in your surfing endeavors. These pages are easily identifiable by content filled with gibberish, but have one phrase being repeated over and over.Cloaking is when a webpage shows different content to the search engine spiders, than it does to human visitors. An example would be a website that tells the search engine spiders it is about weight loss, but human visitors are shown the actual content which could be an adult site.Bait and switch is another sneaky way of tricking the search engines. The marketer will get the site to rank highly for one page of content, then switch it to something else.It is a common misconception that only spammers and unethical marketers use these tactics. In fact, I know of a number of legit marketers who practice these techniques with regularity. This topic of course always calls into question the ethical boundaries of using black hat SEO. Is it unethical or is it a justified means to an end?The people who use these methods will insist that there is nothing wrong with what they are doing. That the search engines don't create the marketing laws of right and wrong.People who stick to the methods accepted by the search engines will argue that these methods are the same as cheating, and thus are unethical.However, as with spamming, black hate SEO can be very profitable, or no one would bother with it.I am a proponent of working with the search engines to give them what they want. Good, solid content. It makes no sense to me to work so hard to get a site or page ranked so highly, only to risk having it de-indexed for using shady methods.I can't tell you what methods you should use to market your site, as many people have their own set of ethics and like to take risks. However, just remember that if you get caught, you will have no one to blame but yourself!
