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Be Wary of Black Hat SEO

Written by: Greg Gaskill

Article Overview: The search engines have long wised up to the "old tricks" performed to gain advantages in search visibility. Be careful; you'll get more than a slap on the wrist.

Be Wary of Black Hat SEO

No doubt you have heard the noise from some self-appointed marketing communication experts who promise you “too good to be true” internet marketing results. They claim they can give you “instant SEO results” or “SEO results for less.” Be wary–you can’t “just add water” and get effective SEO. Here’s why.

Keywords and SEO

As you probably know, SEO writing relies on keywords sprinkled throughout your website content. These keywords are words or phrases your ideal customer or client enters into search engine windows to find businesses like yours. If you do not have the keyword posted in your content somewhere, you will probably not end up in the top search return positions.

Some rocket scientist out there in cyberspace decided to try keyword stuffing. He or she started repeating the search term keywords over and over. For instance, if you sell red widgets, your keyword stuffing might be an article that looks like this: “Red widgets. Red widgets red widgets. Red widgets, red. Widgets….” Seems pretty underhanded, doesn’t it?

That’s why the search engines now consider this unethical practice a good reason to boot you from the search results if you do this. For best results, have well written and meaningful articles on your website with a keyword concentration of not more than 4%. Black hat SEO techniques will get you banned and blacklisted.

Also be wary of keyword stuffing in metatags. Not only is it risky in the same way the content keyword stuffing is risky, but search engines do not even use metatags much anymore for their results. Why bother with the risk?

Backlinks

While having a good number of backlinks–links posted on other websites to yours–tells a search engine that your site is relevant and important, the practice of using link farms can get you banned, too. A link farm is a collection of websites that all link to each other, creating automatic link popularity. Another word for this technique is spamdexing, because link farms spam the search engines’ indexes.

Again, any website owner who sees others do this may be tempted to do the same, but remember that it is unethical and can get you in trouble. The search engines have become sophisticated enough to filter link farm results from your page. They now influence rankings very little, and when they do it is not positively.

Of course, in the end many people do not get caught doing these highly unethical forms of influencing their search engine rankings. Black hat SEO is still employed now and then, but keep in mind that long term success of these web pages is not very likely. The best ways to keep above the table with SEO are:

• Have good content with 4% keyword concentration
• Use metatags wisely
• Get relevant backlinks from reputable sites
• Avoid new SEO techniques that may come up in the future if they seem underhanded

Follow these rules and you will avoid the bad reputation that comes with black hat SEO.

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Article Tags: black hat, br, communication experts, concentration, good reason, internet marketing, marketing communication, meaningful articles, metatags, no doubt, phrases, red widgets, risk, rocket scientist, rsquo, search engine windows, search engines, search term, unethical practice, website content



Related Forum Posts
Three days later - Well, it's been only 3 days since that horrible last month of summer vacation ended, and in these 3 days my hits are back up to what they were before Black August came along. So I'm thinking that, indeed, it wasn't my new navigation bar, but simply that people were out rushing around trying to jam in activities before school started again, and now that things are back to normal in their lives... they will return to normal on my site! My site numbers had been holding steady for about 3 months, before Black August...I had hoped that the classy-looking new nav bar would actually help increase my numbers, as I think it adds a professional gloss to the whole website that was lacking before...but so far I'm just still ....steady... with those previous 3 months, not really increasing.
Re: Anyone used/using Forum Auto Submit software? - Hi GT, I wouldn't dream of using anything like this either. Your concern is indeed valid, from what I understand this kind of software is 'Black Hat' and can only get anyone using it in trouble for spamming and as you say damage their reputation. I'd advise anyone even considering using anything like this not to do it..it's simply not worth it. Take care, Carol
Re: Bad SEO techniques? - I aggre if all that you tell is called SPAM or Black Hat SEO... i thinks this ways not give you experience to do SEO better for increase traffic you're website ... better you must do SEO (on page and off page) with manually, because it's was very helped to increase traffic and PR in search engine ... Thanks for shared
Re: What I'm reading this weekend - Oct 8, 2010 - these are great! In particular, I liked "you’re already perfect" and "Smashing through the Black Wall of Fear." That's exciting that there is a new 4-hour book out. I really enjoyed "The 4 hour Workweek."
Connecting with Influential People - Thanks Martin! In "The Little Black Book of Connections", Jeffrey Gitomer suggests the following ways to connect with influential people (page 106): -Third-party introductions (best method). -Writing and publishing content. -Giving seminars/speeches so you can be perceived as an expert in your field and leader. -Attend social and business events. -Say or ask something powerful by doing research ahead of time. -Engage them by offering something of value first. Gitomer also stresses the importance of making more friends as well.


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