A lot of blackhat SEO techniques require programming expertise that a lot of us don’t have (me included) but it is still useful to know about it.

BluHatSEO.com is a great blog that talks in detail about a range of blackhat techniques like automating link building and site creation. Even though a lot of the techniques are probably old hat now (the author is unlikely to reveal the secrets that he is currently profiting from), the creativity and thinking behind them is inspiring.

Blackhat search engine optimisation is a label used in the search engine industry to describe techniques used to obtain high search engine rankings that are outside of the search engine guidelines. There is an inference that these techniques are immoral and unethical.

However, the guidelines are dynamic and always changing as search technology and the web develop - what is ‘whitehat’ one day could be blackhat the next. And, there are sometimes legitimate reasons for using a ‘blackhat’ technique.

What does this mean for the individual trying to promote their own site?

It’s all about risk verses results and common sense.

Having text hidden on a page by making the text colour the same as the background colour is very risky. It’s easy for search engines to detect and there is no legitimate reason for doing it.

Optimising ALT and TITLE attributes so they include keywords as well as being descriptive is lower risk. It’s difficult to detect and looks like good, careful coding although it could strictly be termed ‘keyword stuffing’.

If you want to know about more extreme blackhat SEO, check out SEO Black Hat.

‘Keyword stuffing’ is a general term for the unethical (or ‘Blackhat’) technique of repeating keywords and keyphrases within a webpage so that it ranks highly.

If you’ve read a little about on-site optimisation (see the basic SEO section of posts on this site) you might be tempted to try this, as at first glance it appears to be the answer to ranking highly.

However, search engines measure the keyword density of your pages (the number of times words appear on a page compared to the total number of words). If it is too high, they will consider the page spam and lower it’s ranking or remove it from the search engine results entirely.

Keyword stuffing can also make pages pretty horrible for user - remember, web pages are for people as well as search engines! You have to tread the line between making sure keywords are repeated in a page and keeping it readable.