Black-hat SEO is a practice that increases a page's rank in search engines through means that violate the search engines' terms of service.

What Black-hat SEO is, exactly? How Black-hat SEO can affect you and your web site? How to achieve Black-hat results without doing anything immoral or jeopardizing your long-term business?

Implementing Black-hat SEO tactics and strategies can get your site banned from search engines, excluding you from the number one traffic referral source on the Internet. At the same time, some Black-hat tactics are remarkably effective. It's important to have a proper understanding of Black-hat SEO and its consequences.

So What Is Black-hat SEO, Anyway?

Black-hat SEO is most commonly defined as a disapproved practice that increases a page's ranking in a search engine result page (SERP). These practices are against the search engine's terms of service and can result in the site being banned from the search engine and affiliate sites. A comprehensive list can be found on Google's Support Site. Some Black-hat issues are Hidden text or hidden links, Cloaking or sneaky redirects, Automated Queries, Load pages with irrelevant keywords, Creating pages, subdomains, or domains with duplicate content, Pages with malicious behavior, such as viruses.

Why Are Black-hat SEO Practices Important To You?

Black-hat tactics can get your website banned from Google and other search engines.

Though there may be some short term success through increased traffic to your site, that success may very well be short-lived. With hundreds of millions of users searching on Google per day, can you really afford to be de-indexed?

Are Black-hat SEO Techniques for You?

It depends: If you are you trying to build a long-lasting business your answer is yes. You should probably avoid Black-hat SEO. Rather, you should look for alternative means of improving your search engine rankings. Instead of automating things that will trick search engines, users, or both, why not leverage software to automate processes that are both Google approved and that will help you to rank higher through search.

The 6 primary elements of black-hat tactics

Keyword stuffing
Keyword stuffing occurs when a web page is loaded with keywords in the meta tags or in the general content of the page. Keyword stuffing was used in the past to get better search engine ranking for particular phrases. This tactic has no value anymore.

Hidden text
Hidden text not visible to a visitor, but it can be read by search engines bot. One common method for hiding text is by simply making the font and the background the same color, but most search engines are able to see this tactic. Hidden text, links or keywords might pay off in the short run, but it’s unethical and will get you penalized or banned.

Cloaking
Cloaking involves showing different content to the search engine’s bot than what the visitor sees. The search engines know this tactic, making it ineffective.

Link Farms
Websites that were created for the sole purpose of populating the site with tons of useless, irrelevant links. Link farm sites are common with casino, and porn sites. You do NOT want link to a link farm!

Doorway Pages
A doorway page is built without any real relevant content but made for the purpose of ranking well in the search engines. Which links to or redirects to the real destination page.

Redirects
Target similar and related keywords or phrases. The only links on these pages are links to other pages in the same group creating a false sense of related linking. They do not contain any content that a visitor would have any interest in.