Black Hat SEO and the Issues

Out of all the practices in SEO it seems a little ominous to have a practice called “Black-Hat”. This is for good reasons though. Black Hat SEO is using techniques that violate search engine policy and guidelines in hopes of ranking better on the search engines results page. Not only does this harm your website in the long run, but with it comes many unethical practices that should not be engaged in.

Keyword Stuffing

Keyword stuffing is an older technique that came around with the invention of the internet. This is probably one of the oldest. It is also very spammy. It involves unnaturally stuffing your website page with a unproportional or un-natural emphasis on the keywords themselves. They can be found anywhere on the webpage. This can include content, lists, sidebars, headers and footers, etc. It creates an unpleasant experience for the reader and does not sound like a natural human being wrote it.

Invisible Text

This is another older technique and one that is spammy as well. Invisible test involves hiding the keywords from the reader. However, these keywords are still visible to search engines and help gain ranking. There are many ways to create the invisible text. Some of the ways include making the text the same color as the background or creating text so small the reader cannot actually read it. Once again this slowly harms your website over time.

Overall, there are many techniques in SEO to be implemented. However, just because something can be done, does not mean it should be done. SEO is a powerful tool for business, and it requires a good amount of responsibility to be used correctly. Not to sound like Uncle Ben but, “with great power comes great responsibility”.