The most common Black Hat Web Design Tactics
Published: 29th of October 2006
Search engine algorithms are constantly evolving to beat
the latest Black Hat SEO Tactics.
Unethical operators are constantly working to beat the latest search engine algorithm
changes.
The major losers in this ongoing battle are mainly
customers, who usually pay large sums of money for what
they perceive to be a lasting improvement to their web
site’s rankings and profitability.
If any results are achieved at all, they are inevitably
short-lived and most definitely not worth the exorbitant
rates charged by most Black Hat web design and promotion
companies.
Below you will find a list of the most common Black Hat
SEO tactics currently in use:
- Hidden Text
This is quite simple; the text of your web page is the
same as its background colour, thus becoming invisible
to human visitors but remaining a part of the page
for search engines to index.
Although an old method, hidden text has experienced
something of a revival during recent years, as CSS controlled
web design has provided new opportunities to unethical
operators.
- Cloaking
To cloak a web site is to present visiting search engine
spiders and human visitors with different content
(different pages).
Although this technique was once considered harmless,
it was abused by Black Hat web design operators to such
a degree that it has now been deemed a punishable offence
by all major search engines.
- Keyword Stuffing
This is possibly the grandfather of all Black Hat techniques.
In essence it involves stuffing a page’s content
with as many incidences of the targeted key-phrase
as humanly possible (and often beyond).
Since this approach rarely produces anything even remotely
readable, keyword stuffed text is usually placed at
the bottom of a page in a suspiciously small font and
occasionally in combination with the hidden text tactic.
- Site Interlinking
This is more of a grey area than an outright Black Hat
technique since, much like cloaking, it is an accepted
technique which is becoming an increasingly popular
vehicle for those web designers looking to boost a
site’s link popularity by artificial means.
The whole thing becomes a problem when a company launches
a multitude of web sites with very similar content and
interlinks them excessively; an approach which definitely
journeys into Black Hat territory.
- Doorway Pages
This particular strategy involves creating a series
of near identical pages with generic content designed
to promote one particular keyword or phrase.
These pages, often sold to clients as part of a bogus ‘sitemap’ contain
little in the way of value for visitors and are now
being penalised by search engines.
These days, the major search engines all feature facilities
for reporting
spam web sites which use Black Hat web design
and promotion techniques.
Whilst this may at first seem like a bit of a no-no, consider
this; why should your competitors get away with dirty tricks
when you are playing by the rules.
Click
here for more information.
Competent Web Design ensures a search engine friendly
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