subject: Rooting Out Black Hat Seo [print this page] Youll often hear the term black hat mentioned around the search engine optimisation community. This can be a slightly confusing term at first, because people rarely pause to explain what it means. From its basic connotations, though, youre likely to figure out that it cant mean anything good.
The term tends to conjure up images of cartoon villains evilly twirling their moustaches over their dastardly deeds, and its supposed to provoke these ideas. Black hat is the umbrella term used to describe optimisation techniques that break the rules set out by search engines. This sounds very definite, but of course nothing to do with search engine optimisation could be this straightforward. As the search engines dont set out many absolute rules, the line between black hat SEO and white hat SEO is far from clear.
The ambiguity of some areas of SEO has led to some experts protesting the use of black hat as a description. Its true that labelling people as bad guys is rarely very helpful, but there are definitely techniques out there that should be avoided, and black hat is a handy way of describing them.
Basically, any attempt to deliberately deceive the search engines falls within the realms of black hat SEO. Sometimes, this involves the use of a normal SEO technique but with the intention of leading the search engines astray. Often, it involves the use of outright banned techniques in the hope that the search engines wont notice. These can include hidden text, disguised links, and doorway pages, among many other more sophisticated techniques.
Black hat SEO is an area that can be very difficult for newcomers to grasp. Even experienced optimisation professionals can have a hard time wrapping their head around the concept of black hat SEO. Part of the reason for this is that the landscape of SEO is constantly shifting. Optimisation operates in a sort of cycle, with the search engines recovering from overuse of techniques and filtering them from their algorithms. A technique that was perfectly acceptable two years ago might be absolutely against the rules today. This is one of the reasons why its vital to stay in touch with your optimisation specialist after your initial optimisation, and you can discuss this with us at SearchEngineOptimization.co.uk.
Many companies question whether its realistic to reject black hat SEO just because some people in the industry deem it bad. This is a fair question. Its rarely good business practice to reject something just because others dont like it. The reasons to avoid black hat SEO are far more practical than that. The main reason black hat SEO is frowned upon in the industry is that it usually leaves a site in a worse position than when it began. The search engines have very sophisticated methods of picking up rule-breakers, and are known to remove sites from the index for months at a time.
Black hat optimisation techniques often do work as their proponents say for a time. After that time, though, things go downhill very rapidly. Stick to the white hats when it comes to your SEO.
