There have been uncountable articles written on the subject of black hat SEO practices. Just as many warnings as reputable optimisers give website owners, their efforts are undermined by those that tell you any black hat optimiser worth his salt will counteract each of the search engine measures put in place to stop these practices. Many ‘experts’ will tell you that what is considered black hat tactics by the search engines is simply being innovative and free thinking.
There is much sneering at ethical or white hat SEO tactics and that the search engines are trying to play ‘gods’ by stopping innovation and the competitive spirit. If you have been around the internet for a while you will come across many proclaiming that so-called black hat tactics can be successful. They feel that they can keep one step ahead of the search engines at all times by using as much automation as possible and creating dispensable multiple websites.
Endless list of tricks and traps
There is an endless list of black hat optimisation tactics with a few that are most commonly used still today. These are the old and trodden to death path of keyword stuffing that gets you nowhere. You have your doorway pages, your cloaking, redirects and hidden text that are all still tried every day.
As one-way inbound links become more important to the search engines, the black hat tactic of creating multiple websites and interlinking them is becoming more popular. This is a difficult to detect tactic that are high on the list of black hat tactics at the moment. But, as each black hat tactic comes forward, so the search engines adapt to eliminate this. Yet people try their tricks to get ahead, even for a short while.
Reporting spam is ethical
Some people may frown upon reporting any of your competitors or websites that you find are using black hat tactics. It might feel a bit ‘off’ to run to the search engines and reporting them. Yet this is not acting underhanded or being unethical in the least. The majority of website owners chew bricks to do everything in their power to honestly and ethically earn their SEO rankings and this is fair play.
Those that feel they are above others and have the right to do whatever they want to artificially boost their own ranking do not earn their SEO Listings. So as long as you can with all honesty say you are running a clean website and all your optimisation tactics are above board, it is your right to report those that try to manipulate the system.
Conclusion
Black hat optimisation tactics tend to blast a website upwards like a meteor if enough black hat tactics are used, but then that website will drop like a stone until it disappears. Every day people come up with new and more “innovative†black hat tricks that they are sure will do it this time. Yes, it does tend to work for a short while, but it never lasts and then you have wasted your money and time with nothing to show at the end.
