Let’s start by taking a look at the definition via - WhatIs.com Terms: Encyclopedic listings for thousands of IT terms:

Definition of “black hat”
“Black hat is used to describe a hacker (or, if you prefer, cracker) who breaks into a computer system or network with malicious intent.” 

There are many articles on how to beat the search engines at their own game and manipulate results to get favorable SERP (search engine rank position).  Besides the obvious ethical dilemma it is worth noting how risky these “black hat” techniques can be.
 

Gone are the days when the “dark side” of SEO was simply typing in you keyword a thousand times and coloring the text the identical color of your background to “hide” it.  Now expert SEO black hatter’s are using hidden links, multiple doorway pages, link farming, deceptive redirects and cloaking. While some of these techniques may produce positive short-term results (long enough for the SEO company to get paid), in the long term these techniques can hurt a companies’ image and website. 

The engineers with the big search engines are constantly working on their secret algorithms to detect these un-ethical techniques. If discovered they may penalize the website’s rankings or remove it from the search results altogether.  Patience and good ole’ hard work it still the key to a long-term successful website.  Keep adding good content on a regular basis and you will creep up the ranking slowly but surely.
 

There are also many good forums where people share their secrets of success using white hat SEO techniques, and those are worth researching.  Be careful when hiring an SEO company and be especially wary if they are offering you miraculous results.     

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 9th, 2006 at 4:59 pm and is filed under SEO Tips. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.