In the world of search engine optimization there are tactics that some shady Internet marketers or webmasters employ in order to manipulate the search engines into ranking their website higher. These tactics usually go against search engines’ terms of service policies and are considered ‘black-hat SEO tactics’.
It is the policy of Orion Group to ensure our strategies are above board and work towards the long-term increase in the relevance and visibility of our clients’ websites.
Orion Group does not condone the use of black-hat tactics.
We have created this chart to help explain and categorize the good, the bad, and the middle-of-the-road SEO practices that exist.
Black Hat SEO Tactics to Avoid
Keyword Stuffing
- placing large amount of a target keyword on the page (often at the bottom of the page in a very small font size)
Hidden Text
- making keyword-rich text a similar color as the background
Cloaking
- presenting different information to the search engines than what a human visitor would see
Doorway Pages
- pages added to a website, usually with automated software, solely to target a specific keyword phrase
- pages usually exist only to promote a phrase in hopes that a visitor will visit other pages on the site
Redirects
- most commonly used in conjunction with doorway pages, redirects automatically move a visitor to a page with actual content such as the homepage of the site
Duplicate Sites
- creating a copy of a site in hopes that it would outrank the original site. As search engines like to see unique content, they can remove duplicate sites from their index
Interlinking
- building multiple websites and linking them together to increase the overall link popularity for the purpose of getting multiple sites in the top positions in the search engines
Now… on to the good stuff!
Good SEO Strategies and Venues to Pursue
When thinking about white hat SEO, the first thing that comes to my mind is making sure the title tags, meta descriptions, h1 tags, and content have good keyword usage. Other than that, good internal linking from page to page within the website helps to. However, here are some off-site things you can do (and that we do for our clients):
Basic Link Building
- increase the quantity of good quality backlinks pointing to the target website from a diversity of external sources
- actively pursuing inbound links from other websites such as: directories, news articles, social bookmarks and blogs
Article Distribution
- write and submit articles such as press release and educational how-tos to trusted online venues
- generates direct traffic to a website as well as increases ranking
Directory Submissions
- submitting to online directories (help to make a search engine aware that a new website or page exists)
- provide website information to directories including what category and sub-category a site belongs in, supplying a URL, and creating a short description of the target website
Social Bookmarking
- attract attention from social bookmarking communities (has the potential to bring in a large amount of traffic)
- examples of social bookmarking sites are Digg.com and Del.icio.us.
- purpose is tell other people about the things they’ve seen and enjoyed online
Social Media Optimization
- primary focus of social media optimization is to drive traffic from sources other than search engines (can also be used to improve search rankings)
- build and maintain multiple profiles on various popular social networks like Facebook, LinkedIn, Youtube
- social media optimization can attract new and returning visitors to the target website
Local Search Optimization
- improving the visibility of a website within search engines for city or region-specific keywords
- using Google Places, Bing’s Local Listing Center, and Yahoo Local
- helping the search engines to understand the target geographical area that a company serves
- ensuring proper use of street addresses in a webpage
- creating reviews on various local listings
Online Reputation Management
- lower the impact of bad reviews or comment from disgruntled customer, competitor, or ex-employees
- minimize the threat a negative review might have on a company’s image
- analyze search results and scour the Internet for negative feedback about a brand
- look for opportunities to replace the top negative search results with our positive search results
Very interesting information. It’s good to see a company that takes pride in being so transparent with their process. One question I had though, can you explain your stance on Interlinking? The chart legend says you “employ this strategy carefully,” but what does that mean? What situations would you consider acceptable in which to use this technique?
Hi Bernard,
That’s a good question. I’ll expand upon that thought a little. Regarding interlinking multiple website to each other… we do not believe it is a bad thing in itself. Sure… it can certainly be over done and be used to manipulate search engines into thinking a website is more popular that it really is, but when done in moderation, there are perfectly reasonable reasons to do this. For example, if a company had multiple micro-sites they want to build and gain exposure for, or if a larger company has multiple domain names for multiple office or store locations across the USA.
I hope this helps.
Scott
Hi Scott,
I agree with @Bernard, it’s nice to see the transparency, as well as give others tips to improve their link building process.
I’ve been seeing a lot of whiny posts lately from supposedly “white hat” SEO’s complaining about others in the industry that are employing “black hat tactics” without any sufficient evidence. I personally think that they should just keep their rants to themselves. No one likes a complainer, it’s tacky. … link removed by moderator … Especially when everything they’re saying is obvious no-brainers and irrelevant remarks that don’t provide any value to the community. Those that employ black hat tactics will eventually get noticed by their own stupidity.
@Rachel, It’s true, Google will eventually combat the spammers. It’s really up to each individual “SEO” (search engine optimizer) to implement their own standards based on Google’s webmaster guidelines and other best practices set forth by other industry leaders. I agree, I don’t think it’s worth complaining about bad clients or bad SEO’s and simply restating the obvious.
In reality, SEO’s are hired to do one thing (ok, well three):
1) increase organic rankings
2) increase traffic to the website
3) increase sales ~ this one is usually a bi-product of #1 and #2, but still.
In order to compete in the real world, sometimes you have to bend the rules a little. However, it’s always good to have strong ethics and keep the client’s AND the SEO industry’s best interest at heart.
Scott