How to recognise “black hat” SEO.
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Recently I was working with my new client and we decided to check some information about his competitors. We took 10 random sites which related to his industry and checked their backlinks, website structure, promotional strategies. Through our simple analysis we found that 4 out of 10 competitors use different “black hat” SEO strategies. Link farms, link market, doorway pages, and spyware were used to promote 4 of this sites. My client was a nice guy and he asked me not to make any reports to Google. He told me: “It could happen with everyone and this website owners probably don’t even know what’s going on… most likely they just hired wrong people.”
I am 100% agree that most webmasters who pay someone to promote a website don’t even know about illegal techniques which might affect their business in the future. Here I would like to list some “black hat” SEO strategies you should know about:
- Submission software. When someone offer to use submission software it means that they are going to spam blog comments, free directory owners, guest books, social network users, or to submit site in low quality directories with automatic approval. Software which can submit your links in related content pages on quality websites does not exist and technically impossible.
- Adding links on their own websites. It means that company or person has hundreds websites (often subdomains and free accounts on networks like Blogger, LiveJournal, Narod.ru etc.) which created not for human eye. Simply, your site will appear in link farms.
- Cloaking. People who want to get good results for a short time with future removal from all major search engines can try this “service”.
- Link dealers. You might find it attractive when someone offers you to find websites with good traffic and Pagerank to buy links. In 2007 Google began campaign to find and punish link sellers and buyers. Violators are risking to lose Pagerank and drop in serps. Today any webmaster can submit complaint on Google about paid link.
- Submission in thousands search engines / directories. This service will take forever if someone will try to submit your site manually. Also, there are only several hundred quality directories which organized well and approve only quality websites. Submission is thousands directories is a scam or submission software. Also it might be a scheme to submit a website in link farms.
- Doorway pages. Some company or individual can collect clients and create doorway pages where sites link each other.
- Traffic from spyware. Your site will receive traffic from computers which infected with spyware / virus.
- Hidden links. Always check where your backlinks appear. If backlink checker tools show you that someone link your site but you can’t see this link it means that it might be hidden in .gif file, under background, cloaking etc.
- Keyword / anchor spam. Creating hundreds backlinks with the same anchor text to improve position for certain keyword called keyword spam. Google can remove your site from top positions for doing this. MSN even more strict about spamming keyword in anchor text.
- Buying old domains. “Black hat” SEO when company or individual are trying to buy old or expired domains to redirect them on your site.
Here what Google suggest if you became a victim of SEO scam:
If you feel that you were deceived by an SEO in some way, you may want to report it.
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) handles complaints about deceptive or unfair business practices. To file a complaint, visit: http://www.ftc.gov/ and click on “File a Complaint Online,” call 1-877-FTC-HELP, or write to:
Federal Trade Commission
CRC-240
Washington, D.C. 20580If your complaint is against a company in another country, please file it at http://www.econsumer.gov/.
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January 17th, 2008 at 5:27 pm
I don’t believe blackhats should take on clients (especially without carefully telling them of the risks)
But Google does NOT make law. So unless there’s something larger here as the issue, the FTC won’t give a crap what you submit.
January 18th, 2008 at 5:07 am
There are some very shady people selling SEO services that promise results and never tell the client the potential problems with obtaining those results. Some of the BlackHat tricks aren’t all that bad.
BlackHat SEO isn’t typically against the law. Deception is. Reporting to FTC does not mean that anything will be done unless a law is broken and it must be proven. Just being a black hat seo does not mean someone is guilty. Though some people view blackhats as criminals not everyone has that opinion.
I look at the two practices as more of a republican vs. democrat political thing. Same goals different approaches. Then there are political criminals!
January 18th, 2008 at 12:09 pm
They’re different business models, so long as no deception clients is involved.
No more,
No less.
January 18th, 2008 at 5:16 pm
It is good to report to FTC when you paid $20 000 to promote a website and people just escaped with money.
January 18th, 2008 at 7:42 pm
Blackhat SEOs are not all “SEO scammers”
I work for myself, by myself. And most others are the same.
January 18th, 2008 at 9:01 pm
In regular advertising there are many different ways to promote your product. Legal way is TV, radio, newspapers, street signes etc. It is like “white hat” SEO.
“Black hat” in a real world is when you put thousands stickers on a bus stations, or send 1 000 000 people advertising letter which reminds electicity bill. It can bring some good results… but at the same way city can bring you to court for illegal advertising and literring.