Black Hat SEO

I wrote this up for the FAQ.

Constructive criticism anyone?



What is black hat SEO?
----------------------
Within the SEO comunity, some optimization tactics are considered Black
Hat SEO. These are tactics which are not considered to be good or fair by
search engine operators, search engine optimizers, or web site visitors.

There is no generally accepted definition for black hat SEO. What may be
considered appropriate by one webmaster may not be considered approriate
by another webmaster. In addition to personal differences, guidelines for
appropriate conduct vary across web site categories. What might be
considered acceptable for a web site in the gambling industry may not be
equally acceptable for a health care web site.

Here are several guidelines for determining if a technique should be
considered Black Hat SEO.

Search Engine Operator Policies

Many search engine operators, such as Google, MSN, and Yahoo, publish
policies and guidelines which document what they feel are appropriate and
inappropriate SEO techniques.

One school of thought believes that if you stay within these guidelines,
you are not practicing black hat SEO.

One difficulty with this model is that the search engine operator
guidelines tend to be extremely vague and non-technical. Another
difficulty is that the guidelines differ between search engines. For
example, Google prefers 301 redirects, while Yahoo prefers doorway pages
which inform the user of the new URL.

The Property Rights Approach

The property rights approach to the question of black hat SEO believes
that anything you do with your own property is acceptable, but that you
should leave other peoples property alone.

By this standard, most on-page SEO techniques are acceptable, but off-page
SEO techniques like guestbook spamming should be considered black hat SEO.

This is probably the most reasonable and fair guideline for determining
acceptable SEO practices, but it does have some limitations. It does not,
for example, address keyword spamming or cloaking.

The Visitor Value Approach

This school of thought believes that SEO techniques which do not add value
to the visitors experience belong to the school of black hat SEO.

This approach labels on-page techniques such as hidden text, micro-text,
and ALT text spamming as black hat SEO.

The visitor value approach has benefits not only in defining black hat
SEO, but also in promoting general practices for good web site design.
Black hat SEO practices which violate this guideline may result in a boost
to your SERPs, but they will not lead to return visitors or natural
incoming links.

The Unnatural Rankings Approach

This school of thought believes that anything which causes a web page to
rank unnaturally highly for it's keywords is black hat SEO.

Unfortunately, there is no generally accepted definition for "unnaturally
highly"!

If followed to it's logical conclusion, this school of though considers
all SEO to be black hat SEO.

Under this approach, even the use of proper heading tags (H1, H2, H3) can
be considered black hat SEO.


--
Will
Webmaster: http://www.internet-search-engines-faq.com

On Mon, 16 Aug 2004 00:44:11 GMT, Will Spencer
<will.spencer (AT) internet-search-engines-faq (DOT) com> wrote:

I wrote this up for the FAQ.

Constructive criticism anyone?



What is black hat SEO?
----------------------
Within the SEO comunity, some optimization tactics are considered Black
Hat SEO. These are tactics which are not considered to be good or fair by
search engine operators, search engine optimizers, or web site visitors.

There is no generally accepted definition for black hat SEO. What may be
considered appropriate by one webmaster may not be considered approriate
by another webmaster. In addition to personal differences, guidelines for
appropriate conduct vary across web site categories. What might be
considered acceptable for a web site in the gambling industry may not be
equally acceptable for a health care web site.

Here are several guidelines for determining if a technique should be
considered Black Hat SEO.

Search Engine Operator Policies

Many search engine operators, such as Google, MSN, and Yahoo, publish
policies and guidelines which document what they feel are appropriate and
inappropriate SEO techniques.

One school of thought believes that if you stay within these guidelines,
you are not practicing black hat SEO.

One difficulty with this model is that the search engine operator
guidelines tend to be extremely vague and non-technical. Another
difficulty is that the guidelines differ between search engines. For
example, Google prefers 301 redirects, while Yahoo prefers doorway pages
which inform the user of the new URL.

The Property Rights Approach

The property rights approach to the question of black hat SEO believes
that anything you do with your own property is acceptable, but that you
should leave other peoples property alone.

By this standard, most on-page SEO techniques are acceptable, but
off-page
SEO techniques like guestbook spamming should be considered black hat
SEO.

This is probably the most reasonable and fair guideline for determining
acceptable SEO practices, but it does have some limitations. It does not,
for example, address keyword spamming or cloaking.

The Visitor Value Approach

This school of thought believes that SEO techniques which do not add
value
to the visitors experience belong to the school of black hat SEO.

This approach labels on-page techniques such as hidden text, micro-text,
and ALT text spamming as black hat SEO.

The visitor value approach has benefits not only in defining black hat
SEO, but also in promoting general practices for good web site design.
Black hat SEO practices which violate this guideline may result in a
boost
to your SERPs, but they will not lead to return visitors or natural
incoming links.

The Unnatural Rankings Approach

This school of thought believes that anything which causes a web page to
rank unnaturally highly for it's keywords is black hat SEO.

Unfortunately, there is no generally accepted definition for "unnaturally
highly"!

If followed to it's logical conclusion, this school of though considers
all SEO to be black hat SEO.

Under this approach, even the use of proper heading tags (H1, H2, H3) can
be considered black hat SEO.

It's OK to do things in SEO if in doing so the benefit also goes to the
user. Choosing the enhancements for your user's experience based in part
on what's good for SEO is no more deceptive and wrong than showering and
wearing a nice tie to a job interview.

The real question for whether a SEO tactic is right or wrong, though, is
whether it will backfire. Either it results in search engines dropping
you, or it interferes with the visitor's use of the site, or in some way
degrades the ability of the website to do its job, which is to communicate
information from one human to another, as well as possible.

Will Spencer <will.spencer (AT) internet-search-engines-faq (DOT) com> says...

Constructive criticism anyone?

This is probably the most reasonable and fair guideline for determining
acceptable SEO practices,

I would drop this and all other editorializing, and would merely
describe each point of view (and arguments for/against) without
saying which one you like better.

If followed to it's logical conclusion, this school of though considers
all SEO to be black hat SEO.

You didn't take the other points of views to "logical conclusions"
(reductio ad absurdium argument, actually), so why do so in this case?

You could keep the criticisms but put them in the voice of "critics of
this viewpoint" rather than in your own voice.

Neal wrote:

It's OK to do things in SEO if in doing so the benefit also goes to the
user.

A good point. If you have a web page or site which perfectly describes
its subject area (you may even be considered an expert in this field)
then it enhances the user experience to find your site. Given that there
are so many dud sites, for example these strange generated search
results or reviews, out there then using some some tactics to get around
the SE's defective algorithms is reasonable, IMHO.

David

Will Spencer wrote:

I wrote this up for the FAQ.

Constructive criticism anyone?

Typographical errors:

rank unnaturally highly for it's keywords is black hat SEO.

Should be < its keywords >

If followed to it's logical conclusion

Should be < its logical conclusion >

"It's" is a contraction of "it is" -- it's not the possessive form of
"it."

cat yronwode

catherine yronwode wrote in
<412084E3.DF253A2A (AT) luckymojo (DOT) com>

Will Spencer wrote:

I wrote this up for the FAQ.

Constructive criticism anyone?

Typographical errors:

rank unnaturally highly for it's keywords is black hat SEO.

Should be < its keywords

If followed to it's logical conclusion

Should be < its logical conclusion

"It's" is a contraction of "it is" -- it's not the possessive form of
"it."

And, for the real obsessives:

alt.possessive.its.has.no.apostrophe

--
PeterMcC
If you feel that any of the above is incorrect,
inappropriate or offensive in any way,
please ignore it and accept my apologies.

Who gives a rat's ass what people in 'the seo community' think. SEO is
all about winning and nothing else. SEO is not about being ethical.
There are winners and losers and the losers sit around all day thinking
about how unethical the winners are because they don't know how to win
themselves. You want to be ethical in life then don't bother with seo or
anything else that makes money for that matter. Money itself and the
whole concept is unethical. Do I sound cynical to you? Well maybe I am.
I didn't make the world I barely live in it.

Sam wrote:

Who gives a rat's ass what people in 'the seo community' think. SEO is
all about winning and nothing else.

Winning what?





--
Isofarro.
FAQ: http://www.html-faq.com/
Recommended Hosting: http://www.affordablehost.com/
isolani: http://www.isolani.co.uk/blog/

At the risk of agreeing with Sam, I have to agree that SEO is not
really as much a question of ethics as it is an exercise in getting
results. After all this is business, not Sunday school!

Winning (i.e., getting higher SERPs that your competitors) is the
point -- and the ONLY point. I can see some logic in balancing the
risk of getting banned against the relative gain in SERPs when
considering dirty tricks, but it still is not a question of morals or
ethics. That then is more a question of if a throw-away domain should
be created.

I have participated in threads in this NG where new (and perhaps
dirty) ideas have been suggested, and many participants laughed out
their sleeves at the ideas, and even claimed to be above using such
techniques.

OK, some may claim to be above using those techniques, maybe also
claiming that their ethical techniques get just as good results as the
dirty tricks. Maybe or maybe not, but would they be comfortable saying
to a client, "Sorry your sales have dropped-off to the point where you
can't stay in blusness, but I'm above using the highly effective
techniques your competitors use." Would you say that to a client? I
think not!

What is an 'ethical' technique anyway? I suppose it is a known
technique that has not caused a page to be banned by a SE in the past.
Who is to say that technique won't cause a page to be banned, or drop
completely off the radar, in the future? You can't say that for sure,
because you have seen that kind of thing happen in the past and no
one, not even people employed by the SEs, know what the future holds.

On 16 Aug 2004 12:53:33 -0700, RFI Admin <rfi (AT) ruralfree (DOT) net> wrote:

At the risk of agreeing with Sam, I have to agree that SEO is not
really as much a question of ethics as it is an exercise in getting
results. After all this is business, not Sunday school!

Winning (i.e., getting higher SERPs that your competitors) is the
point -- and the ONLY point.

It may be the only goal of SEO, but what if it rons afoul of the goal of
web design, which is to communicate information? If your SEO technique
gets you listed but makes the site less usable by the visitors who now can
find you, has any good been done?

I'd like to see clients stop wanting SEO so much and focus more on UO -
user optimization. While getting lots of hits from Googlers is great, it
won't benefit you unless you make the sale.