Todays article is an answer to the many questions we get asked about black hat, to list the top 3 techniques we see in use around the web

• Keyword Spamming: This is simply the case of the overuse of a keyword, or group of keywords in a specific area of the website. This can be in the meta tags, the body of the text, the title of the page or any where else. A (Small) typical example would be if you found SEO, Search Engine Optimisation, SEO etc etc on a SEO companies website. A ethical company will adjust the densities across a large area of words, up to apoint of around 1100 words to acheive the required densities without spamming the page.
• Cloaking: Cloaking is another area of severe concern from an ethical SEO’s perspective. This is like showing the search engine the prime beef steak, which the search engine love and give the website rankings, there can be any form of content, however usually there is keyword spamming on these pages. However when the user arrives at your website, there is a own brand cheap burger awaiting. This is a nuisance to the search engines and upon detection, expect a ban. An ethical seo can build the text into a website, without detriment to the design and function, giving the prime beef steak to the user, enabling sales to be made.
• Hidden Text: Another bain of the search engine - and can be performed in many ways. I will list the most common ways we have found:
  • Background Coloured Text: Simple to implement, white text on a white background, cream text on a white background - all undetectable to the human eye and so you will find many sites out there with this problem
  • CSS: There are mainy ways to move text off a page with css, place it in a div layer, position it to 1000 pixels above the top of the page or to the left of the page, or simply use display:none; to hide it all together, very easy to detect, simply disable css
  • Javascript: Javascript can be used in a number of ways to hide content, however the key to it being a black hat technique, is in the intent to ensure a user will never see the content. There are many ethical ways of using javascrip for this purpose.

Now I hope this article has given you a brief understanding of the minefield of SEO, but one thing we can assure you - we will never implement a black hat technique on a clients website - your long term rankings are our reward.