20 Oct The SEO Community is watching

For those running ethical businesses and running white hat search engine optimization campaigns, black hat SEO is simply unacceptable. They do not believe other companies should be attempting to manipulate the search engines and their visitors and find those using unethical SEO methods infuriating.

This is the common view towards black hat SEO. Black hat search engine optimization doesn’t get your business any rewards and yet is an irritant to others trying to run genuine businesses in an ethical way. With many businesses of little value and relevance clogging up the search results unfairly, it is even more challenging for respectable businesses to get noticed and to drive traffic to their websites.

The search engines are continuously developing new technology to solve the problem of black hat SEO. If they are manipulated into ranking low quality and spam websites because of black hat SEO techniques, this reflects badly on them. Search engines aim to provide their users with relevant and useful search results and black hat SEO does not encourage this. The search engines change their algorithms regularly so as to not be out smarted by those working unethically in SEO and create new ways of identifying those sites using dubious SEO methods.

The result of these efforts by the search engines is positive. A large number of the businesses using black hat SEO do get identified and do get penalised. Many are punished with low rankings and some are banned from the search results completely. Their reputations can also be severely damaged and a reputation is difficult to repair. The search engines are on a quest to reduce the use of black hat SEO and they are now calling upon the SEO community to help them to do this successfully.

Google is encouraging businesses and users to report any websites they believe may be using unethical techniques to get their businesses noticed and to get traffic visiting their web pages. They are encouraging others to look out for signs of keyword stuffing, hidden text, doorway pages and other common attempts at manipulation.

This type of behaviour is not acceptable according to the Google webmaster guidelines and Google wants its users to help them to identify any company operating outside of them.

This step from Google highlights once more their eagerness to stop websites gaining an unfair advantage from the use of black hat search engine optimisation. If you are running an ethical SEO campaign, look out for others which are not and report them accordingly. If you are considering running a black hat SEO campaign, think carefully because the consequences can be devastating.