Black Hat SEO
Black Hat SEO is sometimes called spamdexing (the opposite of White Hat SEO). Black Hat SEO can be any optimization tactics that cause a site to rank more highly than its content would otherwise justify or any changes made specifically for search engines that dont improve the users experience of the site. In other words, Black Hat SEO is optimizations that are against search engine guidelines. If you step too far over the mark, your site may be penalized or even removed from the index.
For example, adding product reviews to e-commerce site is encouraged, because it adds useful content to the site. However, using bait-and-switch techniques to create a doorway page that hooks people querying for information on soccer, it then leads to information about health products will be unacceptable.
The following Black Hat SEO tactics should be avoided to keep your site away from penalties:
Keyword, anchor text and domain name stuffing
Using hidden text or links
Using techniques to artificially increase the number of links to your pages, such as link farms
Excessively cross-linking sites to increase link popularity
Cloaking, delivering different pages depending on the IP address and/or agent who is requesting it
Doorway / Gateway / Jump Pages
Duplicate content taken from other sites
Auto-generated content of no value to the end user
Spamming forums or blogs
Excessive outbound links to websites that use high risk techniques or spam
Last but not least, stay close to search engine guidelines is always a good idea while optimizing your site.
Search Engine Guidelines:
Yahoo! Search Content Quality Guidelines
Google Information on Search Engine Optimizers
MSN Guidelines for successful indexing
- Allen Qu from Netconcepts
