What is Black Hat SEO:

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. The term "black hat" originated in Western movies to distinguish the "bad guys" from the "good guys," who wore white hats (see white hat SEO). Recently, it's used more commonly to describe computer hackers, virus creators, and those who perform unethical actions with computers. In this tutorial, you'll learn:

• What Black Hat SEO is, exactly
• Black Hat SEO Tactics andTechniques
• How to Report Black Hat SEO
• How Black Hat SEO can affect you and your website
• 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 sitebanned from search engines, excluding you from the number one tra
c 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.

What Is Black Hat SEO, Anyways?

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 a
liate sites. A list of tactics and strategies employed by black hat SEO practitioners have been openly denounced onGoogle's Webmaster Guidelines and Bing's Webmaster Guidelines. "Is the work that I'm doing adding value to the user or am I just doing this for search engines to see?" is a litmus test on whether an SEO tactic would go against a search engine's webmaster guideline. If no value is added to the user, but rankings are likely to increase, then your decisions are highly likely to be black hat. The same test can be applied to to paid search practices to determine whether an activity isconsidered black hat ppc.

Black Hat SEO Tactics

• Content Automation
• Doorway Pages
• Hidden Text or Links
• Keyword Stuffing
• Reporting a Competitor
• Sneaky Redirects
• Cloaking

Black Hat SEO Techniques

• Link Manipulation - Buying links, advertorials, and link schemes
• Article Spinning
• Link Schemes
• Link Farms
• Link Wheels
• Link Networks
• Rich Snippet Markup Spam
• Automated Queries to Google
• Creating pages, subdomains, or domains with duplicate content
• Pages with malicious behavior, such as phishing, viruses, trojans, and other malware.

How To Report Black Hat SEO

There are two reason why you may report black hat SEO. Either your website has been attacked through a malicious hack, virus or negative seo campaign of spammy links, or thatyou see a spammy web results on a competitive keyword your website is ranking on. For the latter, you mayfile a webspam report through Google Webmaster Tools. Please use this tool with discretion. SPAM does not stand for search positions above mine! In the event that your website has been attacked through a malicious hack, virus, or malware, request for a malware review after you've removed the malicious code. In the event that your website is the target of a negative seo campaign of spammy links, please use the Disavow Links Tool in Google Webmaster Tools after you've tried to contact webmasters whom are pointing these links to your website to have them removed.

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: Are you trying to build a long-lasting business? If 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? WordStream offers "White Hat automation software," automating safe, but effective, practices. These practices produce sustainable improvements to your search marketing efforts byincreasing Quality Score and growing your keyword list with relevant keywords provided by ourKeyword Discovery Tool. WordStream assists with Search Engine Optimization in various ways, including:

Automated, Relevant Keyword Suggestion:

By including a bit of JavaScript on your website,new keywords that people use to search for yourwebsite will automatically flow into your WordSteam keyword database, providing a continuous stream of new keywords and content ideas.The benefits of an SEO keyword tool become even clearer as your campaign grows, helping you to not only bid on the right keywords, but prioritize your site content.

SEO Workflow Prioritization:

By analyzing your keywords and keyword groups by popularity or visits generated, WordStream suggests where changes will be most productive.

Search-Friendly Information Architecture:

By grouping your keywords by relevance, WordStream organizes your keywords into search-friendly tree structure, as shown below, which you can easily apply to your site's structure

In addition to improving organic search results, WordStream offers similar guideline-approvedautomation options to help improve your PPC campaigns or PPC a
liate marketing and lower your costs.