Page 54 - Preview-copy-Online-Marketing-English

Preview copy
15

CHAPTER 15

15. Black hat - Grey hat - White hat

When the stakes are high, cheating is usually not far away. This also applies to search engine
optimization. After all, if you are able to achieve a higher ranking with certain techniques, the
financial gain can be considerable. In order to ensure that everyone knows what is and what
is not allowed, Google has drawn up guidelines, the webmaster guidelines. If you conscious-
ly violate the guidelines and use techniques that are intended to mislead the search engine or
your visitors, then you are performing black hat SEO. If you neatly follow the guidelines, then
you are performing white hat SEO. Of course, there is also a grey area, grey hat SEO. The name
Black-Grey-White hat comes from film history. In early films, the "bad guys" wore a "black hat"
and the "good guys" a "white hat".

Violation of the webmaster guidelines may result in a penalty. Effectively, this means that your
pages will be removed from the search results.

15.1 Black hat techniques

There are many ways to deceive the search engine or visitors. Below is a (non-exhaustive)
overview.

15.1.1 Cloaking
Cloaking is a technique whereby the Google bot sees (and thus indexes) a different page than
the visitor to the page. This is technically possible because a website can recognize visiting bots.
As soon as the bot is seen, it is directed to another page. Cloaking is often used to add links to
pages that are normally seen as spam by Google. Think for example of links to gambling sites.

15.1.2 Link spam
Link spam stands for a number of unauthorized techniques, the purpose of which is to incre-
ase the number of backlinks:

• Use of link farms: link farms are sites set up for the sole purpose of acquiring backlinks.
• Using paid links. Selling links is also an offence.
• Spam blogs: blog sites whose sole purpose is to pass on links.

133