Number ONE in Google search results, this is what every website owner is aiming for.
Top Google placement is the equivalent of hitting the jackpot in blogging or online marketing; a feat that equates to more income from your site. This is the reason why webmasters or website owners resort to almost any method just to make their site rank high in search engine results. And, this is the same reason why you are reading this article in the first place.
Enter black hat SEO, the potential shortcut to hitting the online lottery of search engines’ ranking.
Black hat SEO is simply tailoring (or even manipulating) your website just for the purpose of getting a better response from search engines. It is the equivalent of submitting a term paper filled with the name of your professor just because you know that he loves reading his name. He might enjoy reading the paper, but in reality it is just a worthless piece of paper. Nobody will learn anything from reading it. And once your professor wises up to your tricks, you will get the mark that you really deserve.
Black hat SEO tricks search engines into ranking websites higher by using such techniques as keyword stuffing, link farming, article spinning, and other methods that can quickly produce a lot of content. Quality is not an issue with black hats as they are banking on the sheer volume of content to do the trick. If you’ve done any of these before you’ll know the stupidity of this practice.
Keyword stuffing is a particularly nasty trick. You just stuff your keywords into as many places in your article to bait Google into thinking that the article is a really focused discussion about that keyword. Volumes upon volumes of these articles, some of which are so saturated with keywords that no human reader can make any sense out of them, are written and submitted to websites and article directories to trick Google and other search engines into “thinking” that a lot of other websites are linking back to your site.
Black hat SEO can give you immediate results, but not lasting ones. You can bring your website’s ranking up rather quickly through any of the methods cited above, but just like a professor who became tired of reading his name, search engines eventually catch up with these tricks. And that’s when the real problem starts for you.
Search engines exact heavy fines on websites that are caught using borderline methods in improving their ranking. Google can drop your website from its search index, and out of its ranking. It is as if your site no longer exists. And without the valuable traffic from search engines your site is as good as dead.
Another thing to think about if you are seriously considering black hat methods is the effect of the periodic updates of search engines to the algorithms used to rank websites. Google does it all the time. Websites that are tailored to answer to Google’s current ranking algorithm might experience a sudden drop in ranking when the new update comes in. Remember that Google is working hard to make sure your black hat techniques don’t translate to lasting rankings. Operating outside their guidelines, may cause you to suddenly lose all your traffic one day and the path to recovery can take months or even years.
Providing visitors with quality content is still the best practice in making your site popular. It may take a long time, but websites whose rankings are built from honest work and quality content are more likely to stay at the top of the rankings than sites that got there through artificial means.
