I need Black Hat Examples
-
So I need a little help. I'm guest lecturing this week for a local college class on web design. We are going to be talking about Black Hat design for a little bit and things to avoid. I'd like to share some examples in the wild of old school tactics, keyword stuffing, cloaking, hidden text. Anyone have any good examples? If you don't want to share them publicly feel free to sent me a private message. I would like to give the students some interesting examples so they can visualize it. Thanks!
-
Hey Baldea,
I wasn't asking What black hat is, I was asking for specific urls that have onsite examples to show the class.
-
In my opinion there isn't an exact delimiter between what we call "good" and "bad", respectively "white hat" - "black hat".
Almost anything has to do with deliberate manipulation of search engine indexes.
Apart from the few examples you mentioned, these days, as you can see, many "specialists" will promise "guaranteed #1" with:
A. These are design related
Meta-tag stuffingDoorway pages
Phishing pages
Malitious codesScraper sitesArticle spinning
Interlinked Sites
URL RedirectsB. These are offsite techniques
Spam in blogsComment spamWiki spam
Private blog networksReferrer log spammingCookie stuffingPage hijackingLink farmsSybil attackHope it helps,
-
I have to make sure that I never dealt with Blackhat SEO before, but I mostly certainly enjoy reading the posts on Blackhat SEO around holidays and special events like Halloween. I would recommend reading such articles.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Black Hat SEO Case Study - Private Link Network - How is this still working?
I have been studying my competitor's link building strategies and one guy (affiliate) in particular really caught my attention. He has been using a strategy that has been working really well for the past six months or so. How well? He owns about 80% of search results for highly competitive keywords, in multiple industries, that add up to about 200,000 searches per month in total. As far as I can tell it's a private link network. Using Ahref and Open Site Explorer, I found out that he owns 1000s of bought domains, all linking to his sites. Recently, all he's been doing is essentially buying high pr domains, redesigning the site and adding new content to rank for his keywords. I reported his link-wheel scheme to Google and posted a message on the webmaster forum - no luck there. So I'm wondering how is he getting away with this? Isn't Google's algorithm sophisticated enough to catch something as obvious as this? Everyone preaches about White Hat SEO, but how can honest marketers/SEOs compete with guys like him? Any thoughts would be very helpful. I can include some of the reports I've gathered if anyone is interested to study this further. thanks!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | howardd0 -
Can somebody tell me if this is a black hat tactic??
I'm new to SEO, so somebody needs to explain to me what is kosher or not. Playing around with opensiteexplorer I came across a network of websites that all link together from a page of links, only the linking page is hidden to the viewer, with an empty anchor tag or something small like a period. example http://zinasdayspa.com/ links to http://zinasdayspa.com/links_baltimore_hair_salon_day_spa_fells_point_federal_hill_canton_maryland.phpwith a tag at the very bottom, that links to http://www.6611111.com. It's interesting because some of these websites rank high with google, but when I do link:http://www.6611111.com, google shows no results! Something very strange is about this, and I wanted to know how http://www.6611111.com ranks so high for such a competitive keyword such as stop smoking, and if this is blackhat. My intuition tells me it is, but I'm also curious how it ranks high.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | tguide0 -
Black Hat? Is it really possible my new client paid someone to SEO the word "here"?
I just took on a client and first thing I saw in Webmaster Tools was the dreaded "Unnatural Link Patterns" message dated Apr 7th, 2012. MajesticSEO is reporting 212 backlinks, OSE is reporting 251. Nothing out of the ordinary, in fact they only anchor text is their brand. However, we then ran an SEO PowerSuite Crawl and found 429 backlinks with 78.1% of links use the anchor text "here" and 77.9% of all links point to the same URL. If this is indeed true I can see why they got the message from Google. The company has admitted they hired a service to do SEO for $299/mo for several months but when they saw no results they quit. Could this company really have gone after "here". It not, I can't find anything that would give them the message they got from Google Webmaster Tools.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Dweber0 -
White Hat - Black Hat, Really confused?
I am I really new when it comes to SEO and especially link building. I have been hooked into websites ever since I did my first just writing content on what I loved. Then came the number one ranking and enquiries! Since that time I have created many websites and have always relied on good on page optimisation and have got great results in low competition keywords. Now I am trying to make a living out of this business with multiple websites retailing products I am hitting more moderate competition on keywords and have found myself on a 30 trial with SEOmoz. This has been a huge eye opener for a beginner and I have not had much sleep since analysing all the data that the tools can give. (My wife thinks I have an online mistress). What has really got me stuck is the link analysis on competitors open site explorer! As I am becoming a real SEO research geek and creating spreadsheets on my competitors links I am finding many are paid directory links! (one off 30 dollars’) . From what I understand from Google is that paid links are against their guidelines? These links are from sites that are ranking above me? What I am asking is should I follow suit in a fine balanced mix or stay clear of paid links completely? Where I always write unique content on experience for my content category pages the real chance of organic linking is slim. Is the only way forward to buy the odd cheeky link?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | jtay1230 -
How is this obvious black hat technique working in Google?
Get ready to have your minds blown. Try a search in Google for any of these: proform tour de france tour de france trainer tour de france exercise bike proform tour de france bike In each instance you will notice that Proform.com, the maker of the bike, is not #1. In fact, the same guy is #1 every time, and this is the URL: www.indoorcycleinstructor.com/tour-de-france-indoor-cycling-bike Here's the fun part. Click on that result and guess where you go? Yup, Proform.com. The exact same page ranking right behind it in fact. Actually, this URL first redirects to an affiliate link and that affiliate link redirects to Proform.com. I want to know two things. First, how on earth did they do this? They got to #1 ahead of Proform's own page. How was it done? But the second question is, how have they not been caught? Are they cloaking? How does Google rank a double 301 redirect in the top spot whose end destination is the #2 result? PS- I have a site in this industry and this is how I caught it and why it is of particular interest. Just can't figure out how it was done or why they have not been caught. Not because I plan to copy them, but because I plan to report them to Google but want to have some ammo.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | DanDeceuster0 -
Is this proposal white hat or likely to harm me in the long run?
Hi, I'm considering outsourcing some SEO to a company I got a first month trial sweetener deal with. I've not done this before and am a little unsure about what they propose doing, not sure if I'm being a bit paranoid or too controlly. Details of what they propose: Send them 10 keywords we're interested in ranking for. Work they will perform:
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | shabbychicoriginals
-Submit site to all major search engines
-Submit 20 social book marks for site
We'll produce 1 article + 19 spun variations of the article submitted to:
-30 directory sites
-10 press release sites and distribution networks Business Submitted to 5 business directories
5 social networks created Work and ranking report highlighting what has been done at the end of the month. Most of the stuff I've done already or can do myself. The elements that make me a bit suspicious are the: - 1 article plus 19 spun variations? 5 social networks created? What does that even mean? I did get this for about £20 for the 1st month with no commitment afterwards so I am tempted to let them try. But should I be a bit wary it might do more harm than good in the long run? Any advice\opinions would be much appreciated.0 -
What can i do with it? Black hat in my competitors.
Hi, Here we go, i have a site that is is in first page but in last positon, and i got a competitor that is in first place but his is just duplicate content for every page. He just chage the keyword but still the same content. Really, what can i do, do the same thing, i dont want black hat my site. Do i have to keepping doing my on-page and link building and do not care about him?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Ex20