Search engine optimisation, as with all things in life has a good, wholesome, fair and right way of doing things and a bad, unfair, downright naughty way of doing things. To describe the two SEO methodologies the terms White Hat and Black Hat SEO were coined. We sit very firmly in the white hat camp believing that while black hat SEO techniques might have some short term positive effect, the long term implications can be disastrous for your website and in turn your business. In this article, we'll examine the top 5 black hat SEO techniques in a bid to help you determine whether the SEO firm you're currently using are potentially compromising your business website. Then we'll examine the top 5 white hat SEO techniques that we believe will have a positive effect on your search position without putting your business website at risk.

Top 5 Black Hat Seo Techniques

1. Hidden Content 

Top of our list of black hat SEO techniques is hidden content. Hidden content comes in many guises but the basic principle is that within the code for the site there will be content stuffed with keywords, this content will not be visible to the end-user of the site. One way of doing this is by using comment tags. Comment tags look like this; The real purpose of comment tags is for developers to add in useful reminders within their code explaining what that piece of code does. Here's an example of the comment tag being used correctly, Here's an example of a comment tag being used incorrectly in a bid to promote a hypothetical page targeting search engine optimisation,

<--Search engine optimisation, SEO, professional search engine optimisation company, spamming search engines-->

Another popular way of hiding content is the use of the Here's an example of the tag being used as a black hat SEO technique again in a bid to promote a hypothetical page but this time targeting car hire, Imaginary Car Hire Firm do Car Hire which is very affordable so if you want to hire a car call our car hire firm because we are the best car hire firm in the world. Other HMTL tags misused in similar ways include the tag and hidden inputs in forms. Content can also be hidden from the end-user by using CSS, excessively small text and coloured text on the same coloured background. All of these techniques are frowned upon by search engines and if detected can mean your website will be penalised or even banned. To the untrained eye, it can be very difficult to spot the use of some of these techniques which is why we offer a free website MOT test at PushON.

2. Meta Keyword Stuffing

There are two Meta tags that are generally used to inform search engines of the content on the page. They reside between the tag of a page and when used incorrectly they can alert a search engine that a site is using spam techniques in an attempt to improve its ranking. 

Meta Description The meta description should be used to describe the content of your page honestly and concisely and be 1 or 2 sentences, 3 at most. Here's an example of the meta description being used in the correct manner.

3. Meta Keywords 

Meta Keywords should be a shortlist of words that inform of the main focus of the page. Meta keywords have been so misused in the past that there are few if any search engines that take any heed of them.

4. Doorway or Gateway Pages

Doorway or Gateway pages are pages designed for search engines and not for the end-user. They are basically fake pages that are stuffed with content and highly optimised for 1 or 2 keywords that link to a target or landing page. The end-user never sees these pages because they are automatically redirected to the target page. Off-the-shelf SEO software often encourages the use of gateway pages as do SEO firms that don't know what they're talking about. Search engine spiders are being enhanced continually to detect these pages and will get ignored or worse still, flag your site up as being spam and ban you altogether. 

5. Link Farming

In the real world if you were to build your house in a bad neighbourhood then your house would be affected by its surroundings. The same is true of the virtual world. Link farms or free for all (FFA) pages have no other purposes than to list links of unrelated websites. They won't provide you with any traffic and you run the risk of having your site banned for participating. Don't participate in link farming.

Top 5 White Hat SEO Techniques

1. Quality Content

When we first started looking at SEO as a separate entity to website build there was one phrase that we would continually hear, content is King, and it's true. There is nothing more valuable you can do to optimise your site for search engines than offer unique well-written content. A search engines aim is to serve up what it believes to be the most appropriate website for any given search to the end-user. Imagine we are the end-user and we are searching for a portable air conditioner for hire. We go to our favourite search engine and search for the phrase "portable air conditioner hire". In this imaginary scenario let's assume there are only 2 websites that target that phrase.

Website 1:

Website 1 consists of a single page with 3 paragraphs of text. The text tells us that the company does portable air conditioning hire and give us a phone number to call.

Website 2:

Website 2 contains 30 plus pages all focusing on various portable air conditioning units that we can hire, costs and technical explanations of how portable air conditioning units work. Which website do you think the search engine is likely to offer to the user first? It's a rather obvious example but it illustrates the importance of good content so your priority should be good quality content. 

2. Use Structural (Semantic) Mark Up and Separate Content from Presentation

Semantically structuring your mark up helps search engines understand the content of your webpage which is of course a good thing. Making proper use of heading elements is essential because search engines give more weight to the content within the heading elements. Using CSS to separate the design elements from the content makes for much cleaner code and makes it easier for search engines to find what they're looking for, which is content. Remember content is king!

3. Titles and Meta Data

Providing pages with proper titles and metadata are essential. As discussed in the top 5 black hat SEO techniques section the meta description and meta keywords elements have been so misused in the past that Search. Engines now regard them as less important, it's still important to use them and use them properly. Titles however still carry a lot of weight and when we think of semantic mark up it is obvious why. The title of anything is a declaration as to what the content might be, so make sure your page titles are a true representation of the content of the page. 

4. Keyword Research and Effective Keyword Use

Create your website with keywords and key phrases in mind. Research keywords and key phrases you think people might use to find your site. Single words are not always the most effective target, try multi-word phrases that are much more specific to your product/service and you'll be targeting end-users that are much more likely to want what you are offering. Use the keywords and key phrases you've identified effectively throughout your website. Assign each page 2-3 of the keywords you've identified and use the keywords throughout all the important elements of the page. Those are,

• Title
• Meta Description
• Meta Keywords
• Heading Elements 
• Text
• Alt Tag
• Title Tag
• Links

5. Quality Inbound Links

Having inbound links to your website can be likened to having a vote for the good but there are good links and bad links so therefore votes for the good and votes that are bad. Good links are links from other web pages that are regarded highly by the search engines and are contextually relevant to the content of your page. Bad links are links from web pages that aren't regarded highly or potentially banned by search engines and have no relevance to the content of your page. 

For example; Imagine we have a website that sells telephones.

Link A: Link on the homepage of the British Telecoms website = Good

Link B: Link on John Smiths Beer and Ale appreciation links page = Bad 

The amount of quality inbound links to your site, therefore, have some relevance on how high up the search engine your site is placed. When sourcing links you should be thinking of quality over quantity and deep linking to pages within your website not just the home page.