Black Hat SEO uses unethical techniques to improve search engine rankings. It results in short-term gains and penalties, as search engines can detect scams. Techniques like keyword stuffing and invisible text were prevalent but are now frowned upon. It is important for search engines to keep the playing field level.
Black Hat SEO is search engine optimization (SEO) that uses less than legitimate techniques to get results. There are two types of search engine optimization, white hat and black hat. White hat SEO is where the rules are followed and approved techniques are used to improve the search ranking of a website. Black hat is where someone cheats to get the same result.
Many techniques that are now considered black hat SEO were widely used and perfectly legitimate. Some people have abused these methods and caused problems for others on the internet. This meant that the methods were quickly frowned upon by search engines and frowned upon by the SEO community.
While many black hat SEO techniques work well, most often they only result in short-term gains. Search engines have become very sophisticated and can detect when people try to scam them or use unapproved techniques to get results. This often means ranking penalties and even removal of the website from the search engine.
Techniques like keyword stuffing were prevalent in the SEO community. This is a practice where you have been given a certain keyword on which to rank a site. The site will then use that word as many times as possible in its text.
For example, a website that sold computer memory would choose the keyword “computer memory,” since that’s what its potential customers are likely to use in a search. The SEO person would then craft the site copy to mention those words as often as possible. This was so the search engine saw how many times those words were mentioned and calculated that it was a good site to rank high in the results. Unfortunately some people have gone too far, often creating websites that are unreadable, or at least unpleasant to read.
Using invisible text was another trick used by the SEO community until it was deprecated. A list of keywords would be placed on a web page of the same color as the background for search engines to find. This did not affect the website visitor but distorted the search engine results and was considered a scam.
There are many other black hat SEO techniques used that a website visitor would never be aware of. While the case for methods that are black hat is primarily in the interest of the SEO community, the user has an interest as well. It depends on the search engine that provides him with the results he is looking for without wasting time on irrelevant sites. It is in the search engine’s best interest, therefore, to keep the SEO community in line and the playing field as level as possible.
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