Black hat SEO: avoid the Google blacklist

In an increasingly competitive online environment, it's no wonder that businesses are turning to Search Engine Optimization (SEO) techniques that are considered 'illegal' by most major search engines such as Google or Yahoo!.

Many enterprises don't realise that these black hat SEO methods are unethical and deceptive techniques that will result in a website being penalised - or even banned - from Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs).

Having low rankings on SERPs due to unethical SEO practices is only the beginning of the troubles a business will begin to experience. If an enterprise consistently attempts to deceive search engines into ranking its website's information higher than the content's value warrants, then search engines such as Google may go so far as to ban the offending site; permanently removing the website from the Google index listings. This is commonly known as being on the Google blacklist.

Once a website is "blacklisted" by popular search platforms its page rankings become so low that even the most adept users will have a hard time finding it through searches. For example, a very popular parenting website in the US experienced a 70% decline in traffic and an 80% loss in revenue after Google penalised the website for using black hat SEO techniques.

Top 5 black hat no-nos:

Regardless of the promises black hat enthusiasts make about getting a website to the top of SERPs in a short space of time, the consequences can severely cripple web pages and even ruin a business's reputation. The following top 5 black hat techniques should be avoided like the plague:

Keyword stuffing: This method of tricking search engines involves hiding text in pages that are the same colour as the text font. Black hat developers have evolved keyword stuffing to a point where text is hidden behind the main area of a website using creative CSS design.

Paying for follow links: Avoid trying to cut corners in the link-building process. Don't buy follow links from another website. All banner ads or text links on a website must be tagged as no-follow in order to be in line with search engine best practices.

Engaging in reciprocal link exchanges: Agreeing to exchange links defeats the purpose of unbiased linking - which dictates the ranking of certain information above other information on SERPs.

Cloaking content: This is the method of creating content that the search engine spiders will see, and then showing completely different information to users browsing the front-end of a website.

Utilising doorway pages: Doorway pages are HTML pages that are designed to trick search engines into giving high rankings to pages filled with spam (rubbish content). The doorway page usually redirects users to another page that is generally unrelated and includes unimportant content in relation to their search needs.