SEO SPAM & Black Hat Techniques

    Because search engine optimization is a multimillion dollar or even a billion dollar industry, it can be very competitive. Companies who put up websites know that they are already investing a lot in buying a domain for their site, designing it, and even maintaining its running or operational condition.

    In addition to that, these companies also look to SEO as an investment well worth it, because strengthening a product or a brand through advertising on search engines can definitely make the number of sales grow exponentially. This feat can be accomplished over a shorter period of time, as compared to conventional advertising models without the use of the World Wide Web.

    In this regard, it can be unavoidable for SEO to have a dark side, or certain practices that are deemed unethical, but are still being practiced by many. These people who perform Black Hat SEO techniques may be thinking that their sites are getting the rankings they need, but they may be unaware the measures search engines do today to avoid such occurrences.

    Discussed in this chapter are some important points to remember about SEO Spam, as well as the practices which fall under the field of Black Hat SEO. The other topics are listed below.

• Search Engine SPAM
• Black Hat vs. White Hat SEO
• How to Report Spam
• SEO Mistakes
• Duplicate Sites/ Mirrors
• Doorway Pages
• Google Penalty and Google Sandbox
• Creating Google Adsense (MFA) Pages
• Copyrighted material and plagiarism