Search Engine Optimisation – black hat, black heart.

Choose the wrong search engine optimisation ‘specialist’ and your website – indeed your whole domain name - could be banned from Google. That means your web business and even your web identity will be lost forever. Here’s what to look out for, and what to avoid.

Search Engine Optimisation, like any other business, has its fair share of chancers.
In previous articles we’ve compared SEO to the world of the garage mechanic. You need the service on offer but most people don’t have the first clue about the work that needs to be done.
That’s why you pay a mechanic in the first place – so you don’t get covered in oil whilst trying to work out what a cam belt is.

But paying for something when you don’t have the faintest idea about the intricacies of the job at hand is dangerous. You leave yourself exposed. And like the odd bad-apple mechanic, you need to be aware that not all search engine optimisation specialists are what they claim to be.

Black hat SEO

‘Black hat’ refers to the dark side of search engine optimisation.

A black hat optimiser may give you great results quickly. You may be shooting up the search engine rankings in no time. The problem is that the methods used aren’t a guarantee of success. Nor are they sustainable. Sooner or later (usually sooner) Google will spot the fact that nefarious practices have been taking place.

Here are some of the black hat classics.

Hidden text – text the same colour as the background. It’s invisible to the human but fools the search engine into thinking the site is large than it is.

‘Spamming’ – cramming too many keywords into your descriptions and copywriting. The more keywords the search engine can find the better BUT they need to fit comfortably and appropriately with the text around them, and no one page should be overloaded with too many.

Irrelevant keywords – want to boost the hit rate on your website about quantum mechanics? Just include Britney Spears or David Beckham as a keyword and find your site shooting up the rankings. For all the wrong reasons.

Link farming – links with other sites should be relevant. So link farming – the practice of linking with any and every site you can find – is a no-no.

Harsh penalties

Performing black hat search engine optimisation on your site may appear attractive. It may generate results quicker than the approved optimisation process (white hat). But the results are built on flawed and dangerous work.

The consequences for your business could be dire.

If Google spots black hat SEO on your site – and it will – it will penalise you. For low level cases it will simply drop your website down the search engine rankings.
Whilst this is damaging, it isn’t an irrecoverable position. You will, however, have entirely wasted whatever you spent on the optimisation process. You may even slip further down the rankings than your initial starting position.

Higher level or continual abuse of the system due to black hat SEO could lead to the ultimate sanction. Google could drop your site entirely. It will fail to recognise any of the content of your site and even ban your domain name from ever appearing on Google again.
You will plead ignorance. You will claim that you employed someone else to carry out search engine optimisation on your behalf. You will beg Google to penalise the black-hatter’s site, and not yours. And Google will not waver.

The black hat SEO will not be your fault. In the same way that few of us could spot nefarious practices at a disreputable garage so few of us could spot black hat. But the responsibility is ours.
Use black hat techniques on your site and you stand to lose your entire web-business.
You’d have to start again. You’d have to find a new domain name, transfer everything across (minus all the black hat work, of course) and start optimising all over.

Staying with the good guys

Search Engine Optimisation may have its bad guys, but there are plenty of reputable specialists out there.
If you want to assure yourself that they will not engage in black hat techniques talk to them. They should know what black hat entails – they need to avoid it after all – but they should give you a commitment to avoid all such practices.

They should also be willing to put that commitment in writing. Whatever contract or agreement you have at the commencement of work should contain a clause along the following lines:

“ OPTIMISATION Co agrees that it will not carry out ‘black hat’ search engine optimisation techniques and will indemnify BUYER against losses incurred as a result.”

It’s not watertight, but any black hat outfit should baulk at signing such a clause and it does offer some protection against ‘illegal’ techniques.

And with any lingering worries about black hat resolved you can allow your genuine optimisation specialist to get on with the business at hand: powering you up the search engine rankings.

*Article written for XP Web Services by Word Forge Copywriting Services