As the Internet dependency for getting information trend is widening everyday, optimizing your site is also becoming important. It’s obvious that you would like to see your site’s link in top position for your site’s relevant searches in the Search Engines like Google, Yahoo or others. Most search engines employ methods to rank the results to provide the “best” results first. Because, Search Engine users like to go through only first few links in the result page. Therefore, it is also important to know some techniques used by the search engines and tweaking your site as per search engines techniques.
The White Hat SEO are the methods which are according to how search engines allow you to optimize. White hat advice is generally summed up as creating content for users, not for search engines, and then making that content easily accessible to the spiders, rather than attempting to trick the algorithm from its intended purpose. White hat SEO is in many ways similar to web development that promotes accessibility.
On the other hand, Black Hat SEO are methods which might bring you some desired improved result but are not approved methods by the search engines. Search engines may penalize sites they discover using black hat methods, either by reducing their rankings or eliminating their listings from their databases altogether. Such penalties can be applied either automatically by the search engines’ algorithms, or by a manual site review.
Grey–hat SEO tactics are those which have some genuine use however are subject to abuse by unethical SEOs and webmasters. Again there is a chance that search engines may penalize for implementing some of grey hat SEO tactics.
However, the following are some of the tactics of White Hat, Black Hat and Grey Hat SEO:
Black Hat SEO Tactics:
- Keyword Stuffing
This is probably one of the most commonly abused forms of search engine spam. Essentially this is when a webmaster or SEO places a large number of instances of the targeted keyword phrase in hopes that the search engine will read this as relevant. In order to offset the fact that this text generally reads horribly it will often be placed at the bottom of a page and in a very small font size. An additional tactic that is often associated with this practice is hidden text which is commented on below.
- Hidden Text
Hidden text is text that is set at the same color as the background or very close to it. While the major search engines can easily detect text set to the same color as a background some webmasters will try to get around it by creating an image file the same color as the text and setting the image file as the background. While undetectable at this time to the search engines this is blatant spam and websites using this tactic are usually quickly reported by competitors and the site blacklisted.
- Doorway Pages
Doorway pages are pages added to a website solely to target a specific keyword phrase or phrases and provide little in the way of value to a visitor. Generally the content on these pages provide no information and the page is only there to promote a phrase in hopes that once a visitor lands there, that they will go to the homepage and continue on from there. Often to save time these pages are generated by software and added to a site automatically. This is a very dangerous practice. Not only are many of the methods of injecting doorway pages banned by the search engines but a quick report to the search engine of this practice and your website will simply disappear along with all the legitimate ranks you have attained with your genuine content pages.
- Redirects
Redirecting, when used as a black-hat tactic, is most commonly brought in as a compliment to doorway pages. Because doorway pages generally have little or no substantial content, redirects are sometime applied to automatically move a visitor to a page with actual content such as the homepage of the site. As quickly as the search engines find ways of detecting such redirects, the spammers are uncovering ways around detection. That said, the search engines figure them out eventually and your site will be penalized. That or you’ll be reported by a competitor or a disgruntled searcher.
- Duplicate Sites
A throwback tactic that rarely works these days. When affiliate programs became popular many webmasters would simply create a copy of the site they were promoting, tweak it a bit, and put it online in hopes that it would outrank the site it was promoting and capture their sales. As the search engines would ideally like to see unique content across all of their results this tactic was quickly banned and the search engines have methods for detecting and removing duplicate sites from their index. If the site is changed just enough to avoid automatic detection with hidden text or the such, you can once again be reported to the search engines and be banned that way.
- Interlinking
As incoming links became more important for search engine positioning the practice of building multiple websites and linking them together to build the overall link popularity of them all became a common practice. This tactic is more difficult to detect than others when done “correctly” (we cannot give the method for “correct” interlinking here as it’s still undetectable at the time of this writing and we don’t want to provide a means to spam engines). This tactic is difficult to detect from a user standpoint unless you end up with multiple sites in the top positions on the search engines in which case it is likely that you will be reported.
Grey-Hat SEO Tactics:
The following tactics fall in the grey area between legitimate tactics and search engine spam. They include tactics such as cloaking, paid links, duplicate content and a number of others. Unless you are on the correct side of this equation these tactics are not recommended. Remember: even if the search engines cannot detect these tactics when they are used as spam, your competitors will undoubtedly be on the lookout and report your site to the engines in order to eliminate you from the competition.
It is definitely worth noting that, while it may be tempting to enlist grey-hat and black-hat SEO tactics in order to rank well, doing so stands a very good chance of getting your website penalized. There are legitimate methods for ranking a website well on the search engines. It is highly recommended that webmasters and SEO’s put in the extra time and effort to properly rank a website well, insuring that the site will not be penalized down the road or even banned from the search engines entirely.
- Cloaking
There are times when cloaking is considered a legitimate tactic by users and search engines alike. Basically, if there is a logical reason why you should be allowed to present different information to the search engines than the visitor (if you have content behind a “members only” area for example) you are relatively safe. Even so, this tactic is very risky and it is recommended that you contact each search engine, present your reasoning, and allow them the opportunity to approve it’s use.
Arguably, another example of a site legitimately using cloaking, is when the site is mainly image-based such as an art site. In this event, provided that the text used to represent the page accurately defines the page and image(s) on it, this could be considered a legitimate use of cloaking. As cloaking has often been abused, if other methods such as adding visible text to the page is possible it is recommended. If there are no other alternatives it is recommended that you contact the search engine prior to adding this tactic and explain your argument.
There is more information on cloaking on our black-hat SEO tactics page.
- Paid Links
The practice of purchasing link on websites solely for the increase in link-popularity that it can mean has grown steadily over the last year-or-so with link auction sites such as LinkAdage making this practice easier. (You can read more about LinkAdage on our SEO resources page.
When links are purchased as pure advertising the practice is considered legitimate, while the practice of purchasing links only for the increase in link-popularity is considered an abuse and efforts will be made to either discount the links or penalize the site (usually the sellers though not always).
As a general rule, if you are purchasing links you should do so for the traffic that they will yield and consider any increase in link-popularity to be an “added bonus”.
- Duplicate Content
Due primarily to the increase in popularity of affiliate programs, duplicate content on the web has become an increasingly significant problem for both search engines and search engine users alike with the same or similar sites dominating the top positions in the search engine results pages.
To address this problem many search engines have added filters that seek out pages with the same or very similar content and eliminate the duplicate. Even at times when the duplicate content is not detected by the search engines it is often reported by competitors and the site’s rankings penalized.
There are times when duplicate content is considered legitimate by both search engines and visitors and that is on resource sites. A site that consists primarily as an index of articles on a specific subject-matter will not be penalized by posting articles that occur elsewhere on the net, though the weight it may be given as additional content will likely not be as high as a page of unique content.
White-Hat SEO Tactics:
- Internal Linking
By far one of the easiest ways to stop your website from ranking well on the search engines is to make it difficult for search engines to find their way through it. Many sites use some form of script to enable fancy drop-down navigation, etc. Many of these scripts cannot be crawled by the search engines resulting in unindexed pages.
While many of these effects add visual appeal to a website, if you are using scripts or some other form of navigation that will hinder the spidering of your website it is important to add text links to the bottom of at least your homepage linking to all you main internal pages including a sitemap to your internal pages.
- Reciprocal Linking
Exchanging links with other webmasters is a good way (not the best, but good) of attaining additional incoming links to your site. While the value of reciprocal links has declined a bit over the past year they certainly still do have their place.
A VERY important note is that if you do plan on building reciprocal links it is important to make sure that you do so intelligently. Random reciprocal link building in which you exchange links with any and virtually all sites that you can will not help you over the long run. Link only to sites that are related to yours and who’s content your visitors will be interested in and preferably which contain the keywords that you want to target. Building relevancy through association is never a bad thing unless you’re linking to bad neighborhoods (penalized industries and/or websites).
If you are planning or currently do undertake reciprocal link building you know how time consuming this process can be. An useful tool that can speed up the process is PRProwler. Essentially this tool allows you to find related sites with high PageRank, weeding out many of the sites that would simply be a waste of time to even visit. You can read more about PRProwler on our search engine positioning tools page.
- Content Creation
Don’t confuse “content creation” with doorway pages and the such. When we recommend content creation we are discussing creating quality, unique content that will be of interest to your visitors and which will add value to your site.
The more content-rich your site is the more valuable it will appear to the search engines, your human visitors, and to other webmasters who will be far more likely to link to your website if they find you to be a solid resource on their subject.
Creating good content can be very time-consuming, however it will be well worth the effort in the long run. As an additional bonus, these new pages can be used to target additional keywords related to the topic of the page.
- Writing For Others
You know more about your business that those around you so why not let everyone know? Whether it be in the form of articles, forum posts, or a spotlight piece on someone else’s website, creating content that other people will want to read and post on their sites is one of the best ways to build links to your website that don’t require a reciprocal link back.
- Site Optimization
The manipulation of your content, wording, and site structure for the purpose of attaining high search engine positioning is the backbone of SEO and the search engine positioning industry. Everything from creating solid title and meta tags to tweaking the content to maximize it’s search engine effectiveness is key to any successful optimization effort.
That said, it is of primary importance that the optimization of a website not detract from the message and quality of content contained within the site. There’s no point in driving traffic to a site that is so poorly worded that it cannot possibly convey the desired message and which thus, cannot sell. Site optimization must always take into account the maintenance of the scalability and solid message of the site while maximizing it’s exposure on the search engines.