Black Hat search engine optimization (SEO) is a collective term for unethical techniques that are implemented to achieve higher search rankings. Also known as spamming, Black Hat SEO breaks search engine rules and regulations.

They ruin the integrity of search engine results, contributing to the users’ bad search experience. These methods unethically present web content in a way that aims to trick search engine spiders and search engine users into making their sites rank higher.

The biggest search engines have publicly expressed their disdain towards this practice. For instance, Google penalises sites that appear on the search results page if determined that they engage in Black Hat SEO practices.

Black Hat SEO comes in many forms.

Two of the most common forms are spamdexing and keyword stuffing.

Spamdexing
There are sites that incorporate irrelevant words or phrases into their content. This aims to manipulate the spiders into thinking that the website is relevant to their topic of interest. Sites that do spamdexing create inconsistencies within the search engine’s indexing system.

These sites may appear on the search results page for a totally different topic, leading internet users to think that they are relevant to the particular keyword they searched for.

When users click on these sites, their site rankings improve. When their rankings improve, succeeding searches and visits could put these sites among the top 10.

This creates a query-results cycle that will keep the same irrelevant sites among the top while the legitimate sites in the bottom are unable to reach their target market.

Keyword stuffing
Keyword stuffing is the practice of using long lists of keywords in a website, disguised as articles or paragraphs. Other sites even camouflage text by giving it the same color as the background. Although most users will not able to read the “invisible” text, search engine spiders will recognize the words and pull them out as part of the search results.

Search engines like Google have already implemented new algorithms that screen against keyword stuffing.

However, some sites still get past the security system and turn up as part of the search results.

When Google finds out that the site has been crawled over, Google removes the site from the search engine index.

Thinking about your market
Although Black Hat SEO techniques seem rewarding, they are most likely to be detrimental in the long run.

The keywords with which you associate your paid links might not even be what your market use to search for you, thus making you invisible to the market that matters.

More than making it to the top of search results pages is being relevant. Since you already pay for advertisements, you might as well make them count and increase returns of investment.

Understand your market—know which sites they go to, where they talk about you and how they talk about you.

Your market will appreciate your effort to get to know them better, and they’ll reward you for it by looking for you.