The internet is very frequently compared to the real world, and given streets and suburbs as its imagery. This is the source of the term ‘bad neighbourhood’, although that label can be a little confusing. A bad neighbourhood is generally something that you avoid in any circumstances. In the world of the internet, however, hanging […]

Peter on 18 April 2024 Web spam is a big problem for the search engines and is something they view extremely seriously. The search engines aim to provide their users with relevant and useful search results. If business owners use unethical SEO techniques and create sites of web spam, these websites may be ranked highly […]

John on 02 February 2024 A small war has erupted between Google and Bing. The former claims that Microsoft’s search platform is duplicating some of its search results by tracking the search habits of Internet Explorer users who have the Bing toolbar installed (with certain options enabled), whilst the latter profusely denies the charge. Google […]

James on 06 February 2024 One of the things you will often hear about black-hat SEO techniques is that they are popular because they work. At least in the short-term, some unethical SEO techniques are thought to give a site a bit of a boost in the rankings. Usually, these techniques are discouraged by reputable […]

Black hat SEO has been around since the inception of search engine optimization. Since the beginning of the internet, website owners have been looking for a loophole in the rules that they can exploit to gain an advantage over their competitors. Unfortunately for them, the search engines have evolved over time and see this underhanded […]

Jon Hogg on 30 March 2024 Black hat search engine optimisation can be severely damaging to the reputation and performance of a business. Black hat SEO is frowned upon by search engines and by those working ethically within the SEO environment. It is often the case that business owners found to be using black hat […]

on 19 April 2024 Spam is a term that has been around since the conception of the internet, meaning an unethical and unusable form of content that has the sole purpose of deceiving a user or search engines. This problem certainly hasn’t gone undetected by the major engines and browsers, with the likes of Google […]

There are plenty of ways an ill-thought-out move can get you into trouble with the search engines. Many tactics which are frowned upon by search engines can be employed legitimately by websites. This can easily lead to confusion about what you can, and can’t do. When you do wander into forbidden territory, there are remedies. […]

Dan on 22 February 2024 You can’t participate on the net for long without encountering spam. It pervades all aspects of the net, mostly due to the free way we use the word. If you have any familiarity with SEO, you will be familiar with most of the tricks termed ’spam’. There are a few […]

phil.cook on 22 November 2024 I was reading a post last week on SEOMoz – https://www.seomoz.org/blog/beyond-good-and-evil-in-seo-11331 which I found interesting as it discusses why some firms may look to use black hat SEO techniques in order to “manipulate” the search engine results page. You could say that all SEO’s do this in the standard techniques […]

Grey areas often get a bad rap. Usually, things which lie in the grey areas of life are avoided, even though they remain technically legitimate. Grey areas are often treated the same as outright no-go zones simply because they are, well, grey. With SEO, however, dabbling in the grey areas can be a lot more […]