Black hat search engine optimization refers to the techniques that are used to get higher search rankings by unethical manners like breaking search engine rules, using invisible text and doorway pages etc. Some methods that used to be legitimate before are now known as black hat SEO since some people went overboard with it and started using them in the wrong way.

For a webmaster or SEO practitioner, it is vital to know these techniques in order to fight them and find methods to minimize their effect. For this purpose, it is necessary to think from a black hatter’s point of view. What is his motivation behind such practices? The answer is quite simple. While most of us sweat day and night on structuring good content for our site and building quality links to get higher Google rankings, the black hatters conveniently jump to the top without any effort and definitely make more money.

This is the same reason why spammers keep trashing our email inboxes because out of a million they at least find a thousand laymen who click on their advertisements and give them temporary sales and that’s exactly what the spammers are aiming for. You can think of them as internet Con artists. Black hatters likewise rake a huge amount of cash in a small time span and then quickly move to other arenas.
Now that we have talked about the nuisance caused by black hat SEO and the motivation behind it, let’s move to a non conventional debate; that is the advantages that black hat provides to search engine marketing at large. No, we are not favoring black hat; rather advocating the fact that there is a positive side to almost everything.

By constantly finding loopholes to manipulate the data and information provided on the web and breaking the search engine rules, black hat keeps search engine specialists charged up and on their toes. They provide the motivation and the reason to come up with constant solutions to counter the loopholes in previous algorithms. It keeps Google and other search engines undertaking constant evolution of algorithms which lets an average webmaster achieve rankings. If it was not for these bad guys, most of us would never get the chance to come on the top.

While we keep combating these free riders with effort and hard work, eventually most of the genuine SEO practitioners end up forming websites and online places with excellent original content and keywords. By having more relevant links, we attract quality traffic and eventually become successful in driving the black hatters out of the field. Although black hat SEO focus on short term gains, by sheer resolve and giving quality time, we can beat them in every field they turn to.

Posted: 09/12/10 11:51