What is black hat SEO

[digital signage]

Hi everyone,
I don't know about Black hat SEO. so plz give me a best answer about this.

[wheel]

Black hat SEO is SEO where you are way outside Google's guidelines. Generally automation is used or a loophole is found in the algo that is exploited.

For example, if you created a program that automatically spammed forums with your link, that would be blackhat SEO.

[coopster]

Welcome to WebmasterWorld, digital signage.

It can also include sabotaging your competitor rather than work on improving your own.

[techmaster]

All the illegal methods to promote your site are called to be black hat SEO. Using software to comment on blogs and submit the links in directories etc are black hat seo.

[lucy24]

For "illegal", read "illicit" or "improper". If you're genuinely breaking the law, you're beyond black-hat and into the realm of... Whew. Don't even know what it would be called.

I'm throwing in this quibble because these boards are read by non-native speakers. Let us not give the idea that you're OK as long as you're not breaking a written law.

[timsoulo]

mostly black hat SEO is used on sites that you aren't afraid to sacrifise :)

It's too risky to use most of the black hat SEO methods on some authority website.. though it may work really-really well :)

[incrediBILL]

<trolling id="baiting" class="sarcasm">
The so-called White Hat SEOs call any technique they're either too squeamish to attempt or is too technically advanced that they're too inept to accomplish a "Black Hat SEO" technique.
</trolling>

In theory all SEO is unethical as it's an attempt to deliberately manipulate the site rankings in the search engine. Google has a set of guidelines which most ignore, BH and WH, but when the White Hats are losing the ranking battle it's labeled Black Hat.

Now some will lump spamming, hacking and fraud into BH SEO, but technically it's still just spamming, hacking and fraud which are actually crimes that go beyond SEO ethics. I don't consider criminals part of SEO so I ignore spamming and hacking, unless you want to include actual criminal activity in your SEO definition.

The Google guidelines say don't use automation to monitor rankings, or SERPs, yet even the White Hats do it so they're all 99% Black Hats since ranking monitoring breaks the rules and is unethical, therefore, a BH technique.

Myself, I prefer Green Hat SEO.

Basically, if it puts money in my pocket, it's Green Hat SEO! :)

YMMV

[BigSquid]

Good post incrediBILL...

Google, according to their terms of service, have put everyone who seeks to raise their rankings in the search engines into the Black Hat category.

Right from Google:
"Avoid tricks intended to improve search engine rankings."

We may then all be guilty as charged.

[martinibuster]

That's out of context. Here is the entire quote:

Quality guidelines - basic principles
•Make pages primarily for users, not for search engines. Don't deceive your users or present different content to search engines than you display to users, which is commonly referred to as "cloaking."

•Avoid tricks intended to improve search engine rankings. A good rule of thumb is whether you'd feel comfortable explaining what you've done to a website that competes with you. Another useful test is to ask, "Does this help my users? Would I do this if search engines didn't exist?"

•Don't participate in link schemes designed to increase your site's ranking or PageRank. In particular, avoid links to web spammers or "bad neighborhoods" on the web, as your own ranking may be affected adversely by those links.

•Don't use unauthorized computer programs to submit pages, check rankings, etc. Such programs consume computing resources and violate our Terms of Service. Google does not recommend the use of products such as WebPosition Gold™ that send automatic or programmatic queries to Google.

There's a difference between optimizing a site (making it better) and using tricks.

[preeti22]

BLack Hat Seo is a techniques in which we do not folow the rules set for google for optimisation the site.But using this technique we can increase page rank faster but it will not remain cinstant for long time.

[milosevic]

In theory all SEO is unethical as it's an attempt to deliberately manipulate the site rankings in the search engine.

This is true if you're starting from something that's already optimally configured and presented.

Many times however real SEO work is about going in to fix problems for businesses that got ripped off by cowboy developers.

For example, fixing sites that can't be indexed because of some nutty AJAX cms / Javascript menu system or coding mod_rewrite patterns to fix a decades worth of broken links to an established site because the new developer didn't know about SEO and changed all the URLs.

[Amanda Panda]

So does all of this mean that the only White Hat tactics are content creation and guest posting? Everything else is Black Hat? On the other hand, if you provide quality content, one could say that anything you do to help users find your content is okay. Hmmm... I'd simplify the definition of Black Hat and just say it's anything Google doesn't like and would punish you for doing. Any thoughts on that?

[deepak27]

Black hat seo is an illegal way of promotion of website. Some of the features we use in black hat seo like cloacking, spamming, keyword stuffing and many more....

[trackchat]

In a word: risky.

With black hat, you might wake up one morning and discover no-one is visiting your website, and neither are they likely to do so again. However, due to the risk, the rewards are potentially come much sooner than they would with white hat.

If your SEO strategy would result in you being banned from Google if they knew about it, it's black hat.

[Pranith_E]

In search engine optimization (SEO) terminology, Black Hat SEO refers to the use of aggressive SEO strategies, techniques and tactics that focus only on search engines and not a human audience, and usually does not obey search engines rules.

[tbear]

Errrr, I don't think G is the only SE that defines Black/White Hat.

[alfredmarshall]

Hello according to me Black Hat search engine optimization are techniques used to get higher search rankings in an unethical manner.Black Hat SEO also breaks most of the search engine rules and it also creates a poor user experience because of the techniques utilized on the Web site and it presents content unethically in a different visual or non-visual way.

[Mohan92]

I think Black Hat SEO refers to the use of aggressive SEO strategies, techniques and tactics that focus only on search engines and not a human audience, and usually does not obey search engines rules.

[piatkow]

In theory all SEO is unethical as it's an attempt to deliberately manipulate the site rankings in the search engine.

Surely SEO starts with basic design considerations - not using a splash page as your home page, having titles and descriptions, starting the page with an h1.

I wouldn't regard any of that as "unethical" but failing to do it will give you ranking problems.

Example: many years ago as an newbie amature webmaster I started a page with an h3 because that looked better, ranking was **** despite strong keywords in a very specialised niche. Trying to fix the ranking, which was way below off topic sites for those keywords, (was that "unethical"?) I soon learned how to style the various page elements and styled an h1 to top the page instead. It did nothing for user experience, the heading looked no different to the visitor.

[dankoh]

Black hat SEO is a risky, short term and sometimes illegal but potentially very profitable SEO tactic. Basically you are exploiting loopholes in search engine algorithm.

[dailypress]

How many people have really used black hat recently and made a fortune? I'm assuming its not easily doable...