Cloaking Black Hat SEO Technique

Cloaking is a black hat SEO technique where one set of content is shown to human visitors and another set of content is shown to search engines

In cloaking, human visitors are shown the actual web page, but search engines are shown a web page which is full of spammy SEP techniques such as keyword stuffing.

Cloaking by User Agent

To effectively cloak a web page, the web server must be able to determine if the visitor is a human or a search engine.
One technique for doing this is to look at the user agent field of the HTTP request.
The user agent field for a human visitor usually lists what web browser software is being used.
The user agent field for a search engine usually identifies the search engine robot.

Cloaking by IP Address or Hostname

Another technique for identifying traffic from search engines is to cloak traffic coming from the domains of search engine operators or the IP addresses used by search engine operators.

The Benefits of Cloaking

Cloaking does work in many cases to achieve improved SERPs.

Detecting Cloaking

One technique for determining if a web page is using cloaking is to view Google's cache of that web page. Unless the web page has turned off Google caching, the Google cache will show you how Google bot sees the web page. If the web page has turned off Google caching, that is also a possible indicator that cloaking is in use.

It is also possible to set your own user agent to spoof the user agent of a well known web robot, such as Googlebot. If the web page is using user agent cloaking, you will then see the cloaked page that is normally shown to Googlebot.

You can modify your user agent in Opera by selecting Tools > Preferences > Network, and then changing the "Browser identification" setting.

The User Agent Switcher Extension will enable you to change your user agent in Forefox and Mozilla.

Another good tool for detecting cloaking is WANNABrowser. WANNABrowser is a web-proxy which will show you the HTML source for any page on the Internet, while letting you set your user agent.

The Penalties for Cloaking

Cloaking is in violation of most search engine policies and is very likely to get your site banned.

Black hat SEO

1. Keyword Stuffing – This is the most obvious technique, and one generally employed by laymen and SEO practitioners that are not very well versed in proper technique. This technique involves inserting long lists of keywords directly into web pages. Proper keyword placement is actually much harder and needs to work with your natural content rather than against it. Sites that utilise keyword stuffing are obvious since the lists of keywords begin to take over the layout of the site.
2. Invisible Text – Use of invisible text (i.e. white text on white background or black text on a black background etc.) can be used to hide key phrases so that they don't take over the design of the site, usually used in tandem with keyword stuffing. This technique breaks search engine rules because a search engine spider is supposed to read what a real user can see.
3. Gateway/Shadow or Doorway pages – These are pages that are heavily pitched toward search engines, but are not visible to your users. Around 8 years ago, this was the main method of generating great positions within the search engines, the situation back then was that you're either employing shadow pages, or you're not in the search engines. Since then, search engine software has been rewritten to spot these fake pages, and so they don't have the power that they used to, indeed they break search engine rules and could get you de-listed. Many opportunistic search engine companies will offer unbelievable deals based upon this technique, based upon the fact that the buyer won't know that it's wrong – now you know!
4. Google Bomb/Googlewashing – It is possible to raise the ranking of a site or page within Google by getting people that own other sites to link to it with specific text. By having thousands of people link to a page using the same key phrase, that page eventually becomes number one for that phrase. This is actually a reasonable strategy and is still used by White Hat SEO practitioners today, however the correct way to do this is to link to that page using text that is actually relevant to that page. This means that SEO practitioners can no longer cash in on the biggest news item of the month e.g. we couldn't link to this page with the text "Recession comes to an end", however we could link to it using "Black hat SEO techniques" since it would be acceptable to Google.

How To Build Links (No BS)

As you know, getting the on-page factors right is merely 5-15% of the game. Push this number up or down depending on the competitiveness of the keyword you are targeting.

Building links is usually the big bottleneck for webmasters and SEOs. Yes sure I could create great content with viral qualities, and spend a zillion of time in social media websites connecting with people who might link to me some time. But you and I know that most of the sites we build links for are not that great, and they sure as hell aint viral.

What options are we left with? Paid links? Directory submission? 3 way link exchanges? Web 2.0 properties? Forums?

Sure, all of the above. There is a right place for everything, and there is a perfect place for what I am about to show you.

Link Farm Evolution allows you to:

• Pick Any of the 7523+ WPMU & Pligg Hosts to Put Your Links on (how’s that for IP spread?)
• Fill out Registration Forms Without Ever Seeing Them (how’s that for automating repetitive tasks?)
• Post to Blogs, Submit News Stories and Comment (how’s that for keeping your link network alive and working for you?

I think wherever the word ‘farm’ is associated with ‘links’, the perception is that of a clumsy footprint-building tool that is going to get misused by the get-rich-quick hordes and fast track their way to failure.

This is not the case with LFE.

It’s a complex tool that requires a decent amount of dedication and if used properly it can become an important piece of the puzzle of a comprehensive link building strategy. Sure, white hat nazis won’t like it, but what do we care what they think?

Check out this space for more on Ling Farm Evolution. I will be posting more about it and I’m sure you’ll be interested in what I have to say.

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 leaner 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 meta data is 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.

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;
Comment Tag
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,
 Start of the Main Content
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 noscript tag. The noscript tag should be used to inform a user that a script is being used but their browser either doesn’t support the script
language used or they have that function turned off.
Here’s an example of the noscript tag being used correctly,
script type=”text/javascript”

document.write(“Hello World!”)

script
noscript Your browser does not support JavaScript! noscript
Here’s an example of the noscript tag being used as a black hat SEO technique again in a bid to promote a hypothetical page but this time targeting car hire,
noscript
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
noscript
Other HMTL tags misused in similar ways include the noframes 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 head 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,
meta name=”description” content=”PushON are an Online Marketing agency providing a full range of digital marketing services throughout Greater Manchester and the North West UK. If you need Search Engine marketing (SEM), Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) or Pay per Click (PPC), we can help you. Contact us now.”
Here’s an example of the meta description tag being used incorrectly for a page promoting a restaurant called “MadeUp”,

3. Meta Keywords

Meta Keywords should be a short list 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.
Here’s an example of the meta keywords being used in the correct manner,
meta
name=”Keywords” content=”Online marketing, digital marketing, search
marketing, search engine marketing, e-mail marketing, SEO”
Here’s an example of the meta keywords tag being used incorrectly for a page promoting a restaurant called “MadeUp”,
meta name=”keywords” content=”Restaurant,restaurants,food,feed,take away food,fast food,junk food,eat,eating
out,dinner,dining,meal,eating,MadeUp,steak and chips,chicken and chips,pie and chips,pudding,desert,big restaurant,small restaurant,best restaurant,great restaurant, exclusive restaurant,cocktails,wine,drink,pizza,sandwhiches

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 all together.

5. Link Farming

In the real world if you were to build your house in a bad neighbour hood 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.

Social Bookmarking

Social bookmarking is a method for Internet users to share, organize, search, and manage bookmarks of web resources. Unlike file sharing, the resources themselves aren't shared, merely bookmarks that reference them.

Descriptions may be added to these bookmarks in the form of metadata, so that other users may understand the content of the resource without first needing to download it for themselves. Such descriptions may be free text comments, votes in favor of or against its quality, or tags that collectively or collaboratively become a folksonomy. Folksonomy is also called social tagging, "the process by which many users add metadata in the form of keywords to shared content".

List of Social Bookmarking sites:-
 
Digg.com         Propeller.com      Reddit.com      Del.icio.us 

Stumbleupon.com  Socialogs.com   Indianpad.com    Google.com/Bookmarks

Technorati.com     Slashdot.org      Getigadget.com     Furl.net

Diigo.com          Wirefan.com   Bibsonomy.org   Blinklist.com

Blogmemes.net  Bluedot.us     Myjeeves.ask.com  Simpy.com

Backflip.com     Spurl.net      Newsvine.com   Netvouz.com

Folkd.com      Blinkbits.com   Bmaccess.net   Blogmarks.net

Plugim.com     Linkagogo.com   Mister-wong.com   Tratata.com

Connotea.org   Twitter.com    Thoof.com         Corank.com

Megite.com/discover/   Facebook.com    Yample.com   Squidoo.com

Taggly.com      Actualtopics.com   Mixx.com   Tagza.com

Emodrama.com    Teenwag.com    Lipstick.com   Swik.net

Dzone.com         Pixelmo.com      Millionsofgames.com   Fritterware.com

Ma.gnolia.com    Shoutwire.com   Thisnext.com   Dropjack.com

Upchuckr.com   A1-webmarks.com  Buddymarks.com    Bookmarktracker.com

Jumptags.com   Fark.com    Connectedy.com   Mylinkvault.com

Myvmarks.com    Tumblr.com   Searchles.com    Bringr.com

Searchallinone.com    Business-planet.net   Marktd.com  Theseotree.com/social

Myspace.com    Hugg.com    Hugg.com     Postonfire.com

Blogger.com      Myweb.yahoo.com                                              Seo updates

Importance of Link Building

The process of creating inbound links to owns website is called link building. Search engine rankings are understood to be heavily dependent on the number and quality of in-bound links to it. In order to prove a site’s credibility and reliability to search engines, they should have high quality links pointing out from other authoritative and exclusive sites. Link building is the process of directing keyword phrases from external websites to your website domain in an attempt to gain credibility and high rankings in search engine results.

There are different method for link building:-

1) One way link building

2) Two way (Reciprocal) Link building

3) Three way Link building.

In one way link building there is no need to put others website links to your site but they put your links to their sites. It is most important in Search engine optimization method. Reciprocal link building means two links this method also known as link exchange where you should put others website links to your site as well. Link Building with no follow attribute is not good for seo. So be careful while collecting inbound links for your site check no follow, crawl status, no. of outbound links of that site. Link building with high PR site is more important and valuable.                                       seo updates