Wednesday, August 26, 2009

Black Hat Techniques Your SEO Company Should Avoid

The popularity of search engine optimization has resulted in many SEO companies being set up today to cater to the growing requirements of businesses. The growing number of SEO companies has brought along with it some SEO service providers who don't mind using unethical tactics in the hope of achieving good results in a short period of time. Such unethical techniques are known as Black Hat SEO techniques, and are frowned upon by SEO experts as well as search engines.

The following are some Black Hat techniques which your SEO company shouldn't use for the promotion of your website:

  • Keyword Stuffing
  • Some SEO companies try to popularize a web page by stuffing it with keywords within the content as well as in the design. This is called keyword stuffing, which is one of the most visible Black Hat SEO techniques. Firms providing SEO services, however, need to realize that search engines are becoming smarter by the day and can now recognize and ban websites using this Black Hat technique.

  • Link Farming
  • It is a well known fact that relevant inbound links can hike rankings of websites. Search engines expect link building to take place between websites relevant to each other. However, some link farm sites are specifically built by SEO companies to increase inbound links. These sites do not have any relevant content and are built specifically for linking purpose. Experienced professionals for SEO services realize that a site can be banned for life for indulging in farming of links.

  • Duplicating Websites
  • Search engines are constantly looking for fresh content; this prompts some web owners to create duplicate sites of competitors and siphon off clients from them. Any professional SEO company will tell you that if you indulge in such practice now, search engines will not only be able to spot you, but also ban your website. While using SEO services from any professional, instruct them not to create duplicate websites but instead focus on creating interesting and unique content, that will be useful in the longer run.

  • Doorway Pages
  • Some unethical SEO companies create doorway pages mainly to attract search engines towards the website for a particular keyword. There is no relevant content on such a page and it is generally mass-produced and posted through a software. This is probably the easiest way to get your site blacklisted. When you avail of SEO services, ensure that your website has no doorway pages.

  • Cloaking of Content
  • SEO companies using Black Hat techniques can also cloak content within the web page to gain advantage with the search engines. Cloaking ensures that the content seen by the search engine and the visitor is different. Using short cuts for getting high rankings convinces many SEO service providers that they can entice the search engines for a higher ranking. For example, one method of cloaking is to write keywords in the same color as the background; this way, the visitors cannot see it but the search engines can. Such methodologies give search engines the impression that the web page is full of relevant keywords. If such a trend is spotted in any website, it can be reported and banned by the search engines. Hire only that SEO company which can provide you with affordable SEO services without using such methodology.

Avoiding shady SEO service providers becomes easy if you are aware of some Black Hat SEO techniques like the ones mentioned above. Look for a genuine and experienced SEO company which can help you get your website attain a decent ranking through legitimate White Hat SEO techniques.



1 comment:

Unknown said...

Such a informative article Thank you for these helpful guidance to increase website traffic. I hope that this will improve my work. I need to get more information from your blog and Can advice me to improve my blog to reach my goal.
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