| The search engine optimization industry has exploded | | | | share you tactics with the search engines |
| into a multi-billion dollar market, creating one of the | | | | themselves? Black-hat cloaking will work for a short |
| most cut-throat sectors to come from the dot com | | | | time, however, you run a high risk of having your |
| boom.Because of the fierce competition in the | | | | domain banned permanently.Doorway Pages |
| industry, some search engine optimization firms began | | | | Doorway pages are "landing" pages added to a |
| using tactics that the search engines have labeled as | | | | website to specifically target a keyword or phrase. |
| "black-hat", or "illegal", in the search engine world. The | | | | Often these doorway pages have no value to |
| "Big 3" (Google, Yahoo, and MSN) have all issued rules | | | | visitors and only exist to capture the attention of |
| and guidelines listing several of these black-hat tactics. | | | | search engines. Doorway pages are generally created |
| Failure to comply with these guidelines will most likely | | | | with software and/or added to a website |
| get you de-indexed, or worse, banned from the | | | | automatically.Redirects |
| search engines.Generally, black-hat is the "intentional | | | | Redirect pages have several white-hat purposes, |
| deception of search engines" to gain ranking or | | | | however, when used as a black-hat tactic - often |
| popularity in search engine listings. Keep in mind, many | | | | combined with doorway pages - they serve as a red |
| of the tactics discussed below have valid and | | | | flag to search engines. Redirect pages take a visitor |
| legitimate uses.Keyword Stuffing | | | | from one page to another automatically. For example, |
| Keyword stuffing is the most commonly abused | | | | a redirect page could send a visitor from a doorway |
| tactic currently. Keyword stuffing is the intentional | | | | page (with little or no valuable content) to a sale |
| overuse of a particular term or phrase in hopes of | | | | page with a product or newsletter signup.Duplicate |
| achieving higher search engine rankings for that term | | | | Sites |
| or phrase. The best way to avoid this is to fill your | | | | While this is not often used, it was popular for a |
| page with text that was written naturally and do not | | | | very long time and deserves to be mentioned. When |
| over use your target phrase. Often keyword stuffing | | | | affiliate programs were first gaining in popularity, |
| leads to sentences sounding funny or awkward. Many | | | | webmasters would create several copies of the |
| instances of keyword stuffing appear at the bottom | | | | same sales page in hopes that quantity over quality |
| of a web page with a term or phrase repeated over | | | | would prevail and they would make a sale from one |
| and over, or with slight variations to the term.Hidden | | | | of their many websites selling a product. With the |
| Text | | | | advancement of search engines, they are now able |
| Hidden text is setting the color of text the same as | | | | to find excessive duplicate content and rank it |
| the background of a webpage. Additionally, this can | | | | accordingly.Interlinking |
| be used in conjunction with keyword stuffing. By | | | | A difficult tactic to track is "interlinking". Interlinking is |
| having your text and background the same color, the | | | | building several websites (sometimes dozens or even |
| text or repeating phrases is invisible to human visitors | | | | hundreds) and linking them together to build a |
| but not search engine bots. Search engines now look | | | | network of links. This tactic does have some |
| for the color of the text and compare it to the color | | | | white-hat merit, remember, black-hat is the intentional |
| of the background. Some webmasters create a | | | | deception of the search engines. Just because you |
| colored image and set it as the background to the | | | | have several websites linked together does not |
| page to avoid being detected; this tactic does | | | | make you a search engine spammer - the internet is |
| circumvent the search engines, as they are not able | | | | built on linking sites together.As you can see, many |
| to tell the color of an image, however, your | | | | of these tactics are sneaky and deceptive. They are |
| competitors will be quick to report you to the search | | | | considered black-hat for a reason and search engines |
| engines if they find you are using this | | | | take them very seriously. Use of them could lead to |
| strategy.Cloaking | | | | a competitor or visitor reporting your website as |
| Clocking, in short, is intentionally displaying different | | | | search engine spam, if such a thing were to happen, |
| information to human visitors than to search engines. | | | | your site could disappear from the popular search |
| There are numerous ways of cloaking content, and | | | | engine results instantly - regardless of any legitimate |
| not all have been determined "black-hat". A fairly | | | | optimization you have done in the past.Jacob Madison |
| reliable way of measuring black-hat verses white-hat | | | | is an internet marketing professional specializing in |
| cloaking is to ask yourself, "am I intentionally trying | | | | high-return growth and advanced marketing tactics. |
| to trick the search engines?" Would you be willing to | | | | |