The Dark Side of SEO

We all know that Search Engine Optimization is one of the most important factors for every website or a blog out there. We actually try to optimize our websites for search engines to receive more traffic from them.
But there are some people who try to “cheat” search engines and us as a visitors. They are using some unethical and questionable SEO techniques. All these techniques are popularly called as “Black Hat SEO”.

Black Hat SEO

Most of you probably have used some of these tricks on your websites before. With or without your knowledge.
But be warned, soon or later Google (and other search engines) will find your website – flag it as spam, and exclude it from their own result pages.
Of course, this above is for those who still use some Black Hat SEO techniques on their sites.

How to Know I use a Black Hat SEO?

I would like to say this:

Every action you do on your website which tries to “cheat” search engine crawl spiders might be considered as a “Black hat” technique.

The following examples are popular among these “cheaters” today:

Unrelated Keywords – Placing unrelated keywords to your content is considered as a “black hat SEO” technique. Be aware when choosing an appropriate keywords combination on your website.
Keyword Stuffing – You have probably visited a website which contains nothing then keywords – right? There are many websites out there who use this technique to get some search engine traffic in the “bad way”. So forget about placing too many keywords on your website if you want to success on internet – in any way.
Using Invisible Text – This is usually done by placing some “invisible” text (usually targeted keywords) to the pages. Some uses a simple HTML technique where they color their font as a page background, while others uses some advanced scripts and tools that crawls can recognize.
Doorway Pages – These pages are simple HTML pages that are designed to be available only to the search engines and their crawl spiders. They are usually full of a targeted keywords and phrases, and they can be highly customizable. Once a “real visitors” lands on a doorway page, they will be instantly redirected to the source web page.
Name tags – These tags are crawled by most search engine spiders. That is why some people try to hide targeted keywords behind link and image tags. The best long-term usage is to use only related and highly targeted keywords through these tags.

Do NOT Use Black Hat SEO

Since this technique can get you a few not quality search engine traffic, it is not good because of the following reasons:

• You might get some traffic from the search engines, but soon or later they will discover you. And that is the end of your black hat SEO journey for sure. If you want to build a long-term successful business on internet, this is definitely not way to do that.
• Traffic to these websites is not quality. And we all know how important traffic quality is today. This may automatically lead to less conversions and sales, much less than using the right marketing techniques.
• This kind of promotion is unethical because of the many reasons. And how to expect someone to trust you when you do not care about it?
• Black hat SEO techniques will be discovered soon or later. Google and other search engines constantly update their engines to prevent “these” people to cheat them and us as a regular visitor.

I would like to hear what do you think about this SEO technique? Do you have some experience in this area?