SEO Distinctions – Naveen Kapur

Gray Hat SEO techniques

Grey hat SEO techniques take more risks than white hat SEO techniques but aren’t likely to get your site banned from search engines (although a search engine penality could result).

They’re questionable SEO techniques but not in the same category as black hat SEO techniques. However, what’s considered gray hat SEO today might be black hat SEO next year. Rather than this led to the development of the website.

Grey Hat (or Gray Hat): Since the color gray is between black and white, logically Grey Hat SEO sounds like a label for the middle ground. But it’s not. Because White is pure white and grey is a shade of black, we have confusion. Some say Grey Hat is NOT White Hat and is just a shade of Black Hat. So let’s step away from the coor wheel and define Grey Hat as the practice of tactics/techniques which remain ill-defined by all that published material coming out of Google, and for which reasonable people (not White Hat SEOs, mind you, but “reasonable people”) could disagree on how the tactics support or contrast with the “spirit” of Google’s published guidelines.

There are certain process of using gray hat techniques which are as follows:-

Cloaking
Cloaking is the practice wherein the web site owner provides information to the search engines which is different from what the site actually contains. Obviously, this is a practice that reeks of deception. However, there are certain cases when this practice can be deemed acceptable. For example, if the web site has content that is available only to members then it could be acceptable. Then again, this practice can very well be abused. That is the main reason cloaking is considered gray hat SEO.

Paid links
We all know how important links are for SEO. That is why it is quite understandable that the practice of buying links can become questionable. Purchasing links for advertising purposes is fine. However, if you purchase links solely because you want in link-popularity, then it could be considered shady. In fact, the suggestion is that you work on links to increase your traffic and just consider the increase in link-popularity as icing on top of the cake.

Duplicate content
Duplicate content can be considered legitimate in certain cases but rarely. For example, indexing and abstracting web sites may have duplicate content. In most cases, though, duplicate content is considered unacceptable.

WordStream is the perfect marriage of differentiation and adherence to guidelines. The software was created with Google’s terms and conditions in mind, but also to automate repetitive tasks to improve Quality Score, save time, and lower costs. These tools include:

Keyword Discovery Tool: With our SEO keyword tool, you can add some JavaScript to your website and the keyword software finds relevant keywords that people use to find your website–literally growing your keyword list as you sleep
Keyword Grouping Tool: This automatically organizes your keywords by relevance, a key component of a good Quality Score
Ad Text Tool: The Ad Text tool automatically populates your ad copy with appropriate keywords, making sure your creative is relevant to its Ad group

April 21, 2008

What are Blackhat SEO Techniques & its effect on Search Engines?

Blackhat SEO is a select set of techniques that should not be used for search engine optimization of any website.Most of these techniques are devised to get a better page rank, by using unethical methods disapproved by most search engines.

If you use any of these following Blackhat SEO Techniques, chances are more for your website to disappear from SERP results soon or later.

Cloaking
Hidden Text & Links
Link Farms
Keyword Stuffing
Doorway Pages
Scraper Site
Link Flooding
Link Doping
Spamdexing
Referrer Spam

Cloaking
Some people use a method known as cloaking to generate separate pages for the search engines and a different webpage to the visitor. This is usually done using smart software that identifies the IP address of the search engine and that of the user to switch between pages. Cloaking is done to get a better placement for spam content or an irrelevant page in SERP pages, with the index of a relevant page projected to the search engines by these cloaking method. This technique also known as Page Hijacking

Hidden Text & Links
One of the oldest Blackhat SEO techniques is hidden text, which is done by changing the text color to that of the background to hide the keywords or text. Some smart ones even hide the links the same way as keywords. But nowadays the search engine crawlers easily find out these Blackhat SEO techniques.

Link Farms
Link Farms are not just a single website which provides links, rather a group of websites that will have irrelevant links to every other website in that group. Even though link exchange is allowed from other websites, the search engines don’t encourage this high volume of links being exchanged. So link farming is also considered as spam indexing.

Keyword Stuffing
Since keywords are the basis of SEO, some overdo with keywords like using keywords repeatedly. Keyword stuffing is nothing but stuffing related or unrelated keywords into a webpage repeatedly, as if making the content look good to search engines. Some push in the misappropriate keywords that are not related to image into the alt tags, which are used to display images is also keyword stuffing. Keyword stuffing was used in the past to get the best search engine ranking and visibility for particular phrases. Keyword stuffing is no more considered by search engines but rather considered spam.

Doorway Pages
Doorway pages are pages that have nothing to do with website but created for search engines. Usually these pages are dumped with the major keywords to attract search engine spiders. Previously this technique has earned higher ranking for websites, so with more pages the website gets listed more than once in the SERP pages. Doorway pages are also known by the names bridge pages, portal pages, jump pages, gateway pages, entry pages.

Scraper Site
Web Scraping is a method where a content of probably a better ranked competitor website is stored in another site known as a “Scrapper Site”. The Scrapper Site would be made visible for search engines while indexing, but when the user searches for the keywords the content of the original site is made available. Usually a scrapper site found by search engines will be eliminated in the SERP but some search engine consider it in the supplemental search pages.

Link Flooding
Usually to promote a website the webmasters use social networking, book marking sites, forums, and blogs by adding the links. Now users just for the sake of promoting their websites flood these sites with more links of their own. Since the purpose of having these sites is to have genuine links, instead stuffing ones own website links is considered link flooding.

Link Doping
Link doping refers to the practice and effects of embedding a large number of gratuitous hyperlinks on a website, in exchange for reciprocal links. Link doping is common in blog, social networking or book marking sites where one needs to add hyperlinks while blogging or book marking. Many users add a hyperlink of the websites they have never visited or add the hyperlinks of their own websites just for promotion is termed Link Doping. Link doping can give undue advantage for an irrelevant website to appear higher in SERP page.

Spam indexing
Spam indexing is otherwise known as search engine spam. It is the method to beat or manipulate the very purpose of indexing followed by the search engines. Since search engines always tries to give the user the relevant content, spamming of any kind like keyword stuffing, hiding links, cloaking etc is generally termed as spam indexing.

Referrer Spam
Referrer spam is a method used by websites to make URL request to another website repeatedly using a duplicate URL. Since search engines consider the referral links of the other website for indexing, enables the spam website that used referrer spam to get indexed. Following any one of the Blackhat SEO techniques listed above may make you loose the page rank of your website or even chances of getting banned by the search engines is more. So any Blackhat SEO method will end up the prospects of your website in very short time.

April 15, 2008

Black Hat, SEO Distinctions

Black Hat SEO Technique

As the Internet marketplace has grown increasingly more competitive,companies and webmasters continue to search for new and improved ways to appear highly in the displayed results of search engines.

Some people and companies are willing to do whatever it takes to get ranked, and therefore end up delving into the world of black hat SEO technique.

What Is Black Hat SEO?

1. Black hat SEO is any search engine optimization technique or strategy that is against the stated or implied terms of the search engines. It’s the practice of fooling the search engine and its algorithm into giving your site or page a higher ranking. Black hat SEO typically produces quick, short-term results. However in the long term, sites capitalizing on black hat strategies typically become banned or blocked from search engine indexes.

Black hat SEO techniques aren’t illegal, but they are both risky and illicit. Some companies believe the quick results are worth the risk, or believe that their new strategies won’t be discovered. Meanwhile, Google and the other major search engines have been known to come down harsh on suspected or proven black hat companies and websites.

Examples of Black Hat SEO Technique

2. A variety of black hat search engine optimization strategies are used today. One example is including text on your webpage that is the same color as the background. The text is therefore hidden from visitors but visible to search engines, which can then use the text to rank and classify a particular page. This is an extension of basic keyword stuffing strategies, in which a webmaster excessively includes keywords and keyword phrases onto their pages.

Another example of black hat SEO is page cloaking. Page cloaking involves having two versions of each page, or a particular page on your site. One page is shown only to actual visitors, while the other version is “shown” only to the search engines.

Link farming is another black hat SEO technique. A link farm is having a large number of different websites that all link to each other. This is an attempt to take advantage of the importance of incoming links as a factor for determining site credibility — measured in Google as PageRank. Some black hat SEO practitioners actually “sell” PageRank, by selling outward links from their high ranking pages.

While most black hat SEO is used to gain a high ranking in the search engines, other techniques are used to help spread viruses around the web and redirect search engine traffic to pages that visitors did not intend to visit.

April 15, 2008

Black Hat, SEO Distinctions

What is Black Hat Seo??

Black Hats work in the clients’ interest, plus protecting and promoting self.
Black Hats insist on grey hats, and deny the existence of Black or White. Very, very few admit to owning a Black Hat, though many boast of their achievements. Go figure.
Black Hats would be prepared, willing and happy to deceive search engines (and thus search engine users) in client’s interest.
Black Hats may be willing to deceive the client about methods: “results are all”.
Black Hats see search engines as the enemy; deceit is the name of the game, SEs are constantly looking to expose trickery and penalize guilty sites.
Black Hats emphasize off-site methods, getting ‘bums on seats’, with the hope that a percentage will convert, or at least return by another route.
Black Hats emphasize rapid results, accept risks, confident of a new fix, as older tricks are neutralized.
Black Hats boast of income, but do not concede that this is arguably defrauded from displaced better sites, and deny potential illegality. They will not even discuss it.
Black Hats believe that ‘White Hats’ all secretly use ‘Black Hat’ techniques, and are all ‘holier than thou’ hypocrites.
Black Hats believe in the survival of the fittest, and have no time for wimps.
For Black Hats, it’s all about technique.