Keep Away From Black-Hat SEO
September 18th, 2007 - Posted in Ethical SEO - by AnsarFor Black-Hat SEO practitioners search engine optimization is a war. They try every nasty trick to get into the search engine listings; however, they end up getting blacklisted by them. Short-cuts are fun to follow, if and only if they take us to the right destination. Black-Hat SEO strategies often fail to take you in the right path and bring back the rank of ‘search engine spammer’ to your website!
If you are a new entrant to the online world of search engine and search engine optimization, it is advised that you have a fair idea about Black-Hat SEO and what factors make your site a ‘black-hat breeding ground’. Here are the notorious Black-Hat techniques you should avoid:
- Keyword stuffing
- Invisible text
- Doorway pages
Keyword Stuffing: Keywords are a must for search engines, agreed. But packing your site with an endless list of keywords could make it rank high as a search engine spammer! If you have pretty good idea about the online habits of internet users, it won’t be a tough task to uncover the keywords used by your potential customers. On the other hand, for those who are new to the concept of optimizing the web pages, tools like Overture Keyword Selector Tool, Google Keyword Tool and Wordtracker will be the right pick.
Invisible Text: If you thought you can get in to the search engine listing by hiding text all over your website, you are doing a big mistake. If search engines had a hate list, invisible text could have been the first entry to it. There is no denying the fact that placing invisible text could multiply your search results. But, remember that this is a short term gain and if the search engines detect this strategy in your site, be ready to say goodbye to your site.
Doorway Pages: Wondering what a doorway page is? Well, these are standalone pages created to serve as doorways to your site. You would come across numerous SEO firms that rely on doorway pages for search engine marketing and some of them go to the next level by offering software to create such pages. If you are keen on short-term gains, you can rely on these firms. On the other hand, if long term gains and increased business conversions are your focus, it is better that you keep away from this filthy Black-Hat SEO strategy. Doorway pages provide no secret entry to the search engines, rely on other ethical SEO strategies and take your website to the top of the search results.
Link Farms And Bad Neighborhoods Could Spell Disaster:
Yes, bad neighborhoods could drag your site to the status of a search engine spammer. If you have outbound links to websites with bad reputation, chances are high that the search engines penalize you for the backdoor entry. More often, search engine firms rely on link farms in generating the link popularity of the site. Here again, this approach is efficient as a short-term goal, the long-term gain of this approach will be the rank as a search engine spammer. There is no point in keeping hundreds of links in your website. It is advised that you keep the links in a page to the minimum, lower the better. Also, when you participate in a link farm, the links that you obtain to your site will be from totally irrelevant sites. Building link popularity is a long-term process and you can succeed in this, if and only if you link to relevant sites.
The offers provided by Black-Hat SEO firms will be too tempting to take up. Yes, you can have the confidence of guaranteed results with these firms; in addition, you can gain the rank of search engine spammer as a long-term gain.