Search Engine Marketing Blog

Black Hat SEO

Black hat search engine optimization methods are generally considered to be those that cannot be seen by the visitor to the site or are not part of the cohesive whole site. However, in the sense that black hat search engine optimization is perceived to be unethical, it might be wise4r to attempt to find another term to refer to ‘black hat” web masters. For, such techniques are not misleading the public necessarily, nor are they illegal in most cases.

In the cases where such techniques might mislead the Google searcher, it is usually due as much to accident as to deliberate intent. In other words, the keywords can be misleading, thus causing the search engine to call in pages that should not have been selected because of the content displayed. A deliberate attack would be to deliberately set out to hijack the web address of a profitable competitor just to prove it could be done.

There are several techniques that are commonly considered to be black hat search engine optimization methods. For instance, comments tags allow you to hide keywords within your source code. Generally, since search engines don’t look at the comments anyway, this method of adding keywords is less helpful than some others. Some black hat types use stuffed ALT attributes. ALT attributes are intended to assist those people using accessibility devices such as Braille readers and screen readers. The Alternative text describes the image so that the blind person can understand what the object is that is placed on the screen. A black hat technique will not describe the object, but will instead pad the text with more keywords. They may also describe the image AND pad the text with added keywords. A good rule of thumb is to use ALT attributes that could be understood if read aloud. Extra words that don’t describe the image are counter to the purpose of the ALT attributes. Another caution is to avoid using very small 1 pixel by 1-pixel images just for the purpose of additional ALT attributes.

Because of keyword stuffing, many of the search engines have attached less and less importance to the META description tags. The keyword stuffing is the black hat technique. Instead of using real informative descriptions of the content material for the page, the META description was being used just to randomly insert keyword strings. Because of the use of black hat META description treatment the search engines have reduced the importance of the use of keywords, or have taken steps to relate keywords to the page context. In this instance, search engines have also determined an upper limit of keyword usage. In other words, too many keywords reduce the rank in the same way that too few keywords does. Actually, since it’s assumed to be deliberate black hat techniques, it can result in removing the web page or entire web site from the rankings.

The important points to remember to avoid potential black hat accusations is no keyword stuffing, stay away from bad neighborhoods and build a great resource site.

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