SEO Consult Blog

The truth about Search engine optimisation is that you get both a good and a bad side. The good is usually referred to as an SEO that follows white hat techniques and the bad is an SEO campaign that uses black hat tricks.

Learning about white hat techniques

White hat techniques applied in SEO simply means that the applicable search engine optimisation rules have been followed and the correct procedure applied. Nothing sneaky or unethical has been done to increase ranking or to improve traffic.

The typical white hat techniques include internal linking. This is basically the legitimate build up of links within a particular site. The importance of links is related to the fact that with links, internet users are able to visit a site via another. Therefore, the link draws in guests from other sites.

Content creation is another white hat technique applied to SEO. For a website to be effective the content needs to be unique and keyword rich. It should also contain enough information and the keywords should be relevant.

It is still regarded white hat techniques if there is an abundant amount of keywords on the home page and all other pages. However it is vital that the keywords remain relevant. If not relevant, it will not be considered a white hat technique. Other tools such as adding Meta tags are also regarded as white hat techniques.

What are considered to be black hat techniques?

Black hat tricks simply refer to ways in which people use SEO techniques incorrectly or illegitimately in order to get good rankings and better exposure.. Some of the more familiar black hat techniques include adding hidden text to a website. This is achieved by including text that is the same colour as the background of the site. This way one does not see the text but it will still be detected by search engines.

A smart way to increase relativity of a sight, it may get your site blacklisted. The stuffing or flooding of keywords is another bad black hat technique. Here there is a difference between the white hat technique of using as many relevant keywords as possible and using irrelevant key phrases.

The content of the website that incorporates such a technique will not make much sense and misleads visitors. Doorway pages added to websites that serve no purpose at all but to target specific keywords is another popular black hat trick.

The results of the use of black hat tricks

Everything about black hat tricks is not good and could lead to ones website being banned or penalised. Black Hat techniques use mass advertising and useless keywords and are not only annoying to users of websites but also to search engines.

It decreases the quality and credibility of such search engines and so they aim to get rid of sites that incorporate black hat tricks. It is therefore uncommon for a site to be completely restricted or fined for using these tricks in order for them to start making use of ethical white hat techniques.

Shedding light on good SEO practice can take you a long way towards success, ignorance in the world of SEO is not excuse and carries with it quite serious consequences such as losses financially as well as reputation.

1.    Black Hat techniques are frowned on very seriously.  Whatever search engine you trust with your indexing, make sure you know their rules and regulations fully and stick to them.
2.    Don’t rely on Paid Search Advertising either as most people don’t get it right and a lot more have the idea that if they concentrate on buying advertising they wont have to focus on SEO.  While this method can be an effective means of targeting audiences, nothing replaces organic search engine optimisation in the long run and if you do go down this route it is advisable that you target advertising that has the ability to find the people you are looking for instead of using paid search campaigns.
3.    Don’t use graphics for text links. Using graphics to represent a link is a highly visible method of getting attention but most major search engines don’t have a clue whether a graphic link refers to a specific web page or whether it points to something else.  Search engines need good old fashioned words in plain text and if it is not possible to exclude graphics, then you should include a set of text links somewhere on the web page.
4.    Forgo using frames as search engines have a hard time indexing website that use frames in their design.  Frames use several different HTML files to display only one page and will usually only index the first file they find, ignoring the others.  Power Users or people that use the internet as their main means of research and buying will avoid framed sites.
5. Entry or index pages that ask the user to “enter’ are called Splash Pages and are not good.  These pages are usually highly graphic or animated and as the index page is the first one read by search engines it is far better to make them readable.  Most of the time the only content included on these pages is the words “skip intro” which then redirects visitors to the main home page.  Search engines do not like redirect commands, they want content and lots of it.
6.    If you don’t clearly define your action points then you are making a mistake in your design which can have negative effects on SEO.  You need to clearly define what your objectives are, what the reason for your site is; and who your audience are. What actions are they required to do once they have landed on your site.  If you don’t take these points into consideration before designing your website, you run the risk of providing a poor experience for your users.  Without action points your visitors will not be able to tell what the purpose of your site is, or how to navigate around it, they are left to their own devices and this is pointless.