Who Wears the Black Hat on the World Wide Web?

By Carl Weiss

If you have been working the web for any length of time, then you know that the search engines frown on what is known as “Black Hat” techniques.   This technology has been used to exploit search engine algorithms since the first search engines appeared.  The reason black hatting used to be so popular was because it could move your website onto page 1 in a hurry. 

Before the turn of the century, black hatting was practically a requirement since the practice was so prevalent.  However, during the past few years, search engine operators have designed their spiders to search and destroy anyone employing black hat techniques.  In fact, the past half dozen updates on Google have been designed specifically to crack down on sites that are still employing black hat SEO.  While tricking the search engines into giving your site a higher ranking than it deserves may work in the short term, once the other shoe drops and the search engine spiders catch onto such tactics there most definitely will be repercussions.  Many times it results in a site being either downgraded or even delisted. 

The problem today is that most people still don’t know where the line in the sand has been drawn when it comes to black hatting.  And the line keeps moving all the time.  So to make it easy to understand what is considered black hat SEO I have compiled the list below. 

Keyword Stuffing relies on inserting repeated keywords within the text, hidden text, title or meta tags in order to generate increased relevance of a page.

Spamdexing doesn't involve men in tights.  Like keyword stuffing the technique involves repeating unrelated phrases, to manipulate the relevance or prominence of resources indexed in a manner inconsistent with the purpose of the indexing system.

Doorway Pages are web pages created specifically for spamdexing.  Also known as bridge pages or jump pages, their purpose is to redirect those who click on the page onto another website.  If you have ever clicked on a search engine listing only to be redirected to a porn site or a spam site then you have hit a doorway page.  Doorway pages are relatively easy to identify since they are designed for search engines and not for people.  They redirect the reader so quickly that it is virtually impossible for a human being to even see the original page.

Link Farming doesn’t involve the swine industry, although the search engines tend to treat perpetrators of the technique as swine.  What link farming does is create numerous backlinks for a site by generating an increasing number of fake sites that link to your own.  Back in the late 90’s paid link farms were prolific.  Since links indicate popularity, these businesses did quite well until the search engine spiders became savvy enough to determine real links from the farmed kind.  Today, relying on fake links is one of the quickest ways to get delisted.

Cloaking does not have anything to do with the series Star Trek, although it works for web sites much the same way that it worked for the Klingons.  Cloaking involves hiding the presence of Flash animations, by displaying a text-only version for the express purpose of getting the search engine spiders to ignore the fact that you are employing Flash (which Google hates). 

Duplicate Content on Multiple Sites is an SEO no-no.  Many people try to game the system by creating clones of sites with different urls in order to generate top ranking.  The problem is that once the search engines catch onto to this tactic (and they always do), all of these sites will wind up delisted.  Better to create unique content for each landing page (which is not a carbon copy) in order to go after the SEO high ground.  They can have a similar skin, provided that the guts are different.  (This is called a landing page and is a legitimate way to work the web.)

Automated Content Generation is becoming ever more popular with website owners.  Everything from page generation to autoblogging has become all the rage.  The problem is the fact that automated systems are still not sophisticated enough to take the place of a human being and the spiders can tell the difference.  In fact, they regard the use of automated content generation for the most part as cheating.  So if you ever hope to win the war for keyword dominance, this is not a technique I would recommend.

What happens if you get caught black hatting?

If you or anyone in your employ is caught using black hat SEO the penalties can be severe.  Not only will your websites start disappearing from page one, depending upon the infraction, you may never be able to get back on top of the heap again.  Google has an especially long memory. 

Case in point: We were hired by a client with two physical locations and corresponding websites to help them conquer the search engines.  What the client failed to mention was the fact that they had previously hired an SEO pro to promote one of their two sites.  This pro had then used black hat technology to get them onto page one of Google.  This worked for about a month, then they disappeared from the world’s most popular search engine altogether. 

They hired us a few months later and failed to disclose this fact.  After about four months we had worked their sister site onto page one of Yahoo, Bing and Google.  However, the sister site appeared only on Bing and Yahoo.  After questioning the partners they admitted that they had indeed hired someone whom they knew used black hat SEO on this site.  So poisoned had the well become that not only did it affect their main website, but it also put the brakes on any other landing page attached to their physical address.  This is due to the fact that Google Maps and Google Local link every landing page connected to their address with their previous black hat infraction.  As a result, the only ways for them to generate page one results were either to move their office, or resort to pay-per-click ads on Google. (Guess which of the two they chose to pursue?)

The bottom line is that you don’t need to cheat them to beat them.

English: White hat seo symbolizes good ethic techniques in search engine marketing (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The reason that I point out the previous case is to remind all of you that if you really want to start working the web to win then you have to stop looking for the easy out.  Instead of trying to cheat your way to the top, simply make a long term commitment to produce quality content on a regular basis.  Sure, it can take a few months to see the results, but it is worth it.  As an added inducement when the search engines alter their algorithms you won’t be whipped around and forced to start from scratch.  Plus, you will never run the risk of being either delisted or blackballed by the search engines.  Remember, the good guys always wear the white hats.

If you want to learn even more SEO tactics, Carl Weiss and Hector Cisneros have just published their Working the Web to Win book on Amazon.com.  Along with detailed online marketing tactics the book covers everything you need to know in order to start generating online success.  The e-book version is just $4.95.  If you want to learn how to start working the web to win, this is a sure bet.  

Does Internet Ranking Really Matter Any More?

By Carl Weiss

Having been in the business of working the web for the past 19 years, I can still remember a time when search engine ranking was the be-all end-all of internet marketing.  Before the year 2000 it was possible to generate a page one ranking on a number of search engines with names such as Lycos, Alta Vista, LookSmart, Infoseek, Hot Bot, Excite and more in as little as 24-hours.  Better still was the fact that everything you needed to make the grade online before the turn of the century resided on your website.  No blogging, social networking or video required.

English: a chart to describe the search engine market (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Back then while Google was part of the scheme of things, they were a small part, not having yet become the 800 lb gorilla in the room that they are today.  In 2000 Yahoo was the big kid on the block commanding more than 40% of the search market.  (Today that figure is down to around 12%.) While many of the lesser known search engines didn’t exactly dominate the Internet, a number of them could boast significant traffic.  What this meant was that no single entity had a stranglehold on the market. 

Fast forward to 2014 with Google controlling 80% of search and the rules have changed.  Now instead of taking 24-48 hours to produce a page one organic search, it isn’t unusual for it to take 3-6 months to get on page one.  And getting there is no longer an injection of on-site SEO.  It’s now a process involving daily social network feeds, weekly blogs and monthly videos all of which need to be as organized and optimized as your website.  What this also means is that there is no longer any quick fix that will enable you to generate prime search engine results.  Add to this the fact that no sooner do you get a bead on what Google wants when they up and change the rules.  The result of this is that one day you are on page one and the next you find yourself on page twenty one. Sound familiar?

Who Keeps Changing the Channel?

Love it or hate it, the Internet is a game.  Play it well and you will be rewarded.  Play it poorly and you might as well not play at all.  The problem is that in this game the rules not only keep changing, they aren’t even posted.  That can make it hard to determine a winning strategy.  While Google posts information including videos that purport to tell us mere mortals what they want in terms of content, their explanations are more than a little vague.  The reason they (and all other search engine operators) do this is to keep anyone from being able dominate search. 

If you read about any of Google’s recent updates that sported adorable names like Panda and Penguin and Hummingbird then you know that their aftermath was anything but cute and fluffy.  That’s because when it comes to updates, the search engines aren’t simply trying to improve their search algorithms, they are also out to shake out the rug to eliminate anyone who is trying to cheat the system in order to beat the system.

Got Game?

In 2000 it was common for professional optimizers to game the system by using black hat techniques such as link farms and keyword stuffing to make their client’s sites seem more valuable to the search engine spiders.  Of course back then the spiders weren’t all that savvy and it was relatively simple to trick them.  Today the spiders are much smarter, being able not only to read text but to understand its meaning.  This means that they can determine how well your posts and blogs are constructed.  They can even figure out if you are plagiarizing other written material (which is why auto-blogging can be so dangerous to your ranking).  Worst still, once the spiders determine that your site is not playing by the rules, not only are they ready, willing and able to relegate your site to the backwaters of the web, but they can also blacklist your site so that you will find it nearly impossible to climb back out of the hole you have dug.

Being a professional digital marketing consultant I have known clients that have come to us seeking help once they realized that their site had become blacklisted.  While we  were able to help some of them rectify the situation, we literally had to tell others that they were going to have to start from scratch.  So what I tell everyone who asks my advice is that you need to be very careful with whom you allow to promote your business online.  If anyone comes to you and states that they can generate a page one organic result on Google in days or weeks, run do not walk to the nearest exit.  These black hatters are going to do more harm than good in the long run, which is the only thing that matters online nowadays. 

If you want to make the Internet part of your business marketing scheme, then you need to do the work.  Or, you need to decide how much of the work you would care to do then farm out the remainder.  Either way, if you want to create a rock solid pate one presence on the search engines you are going to have to take the long view and commit to creating content, content and more content every day of the week, 52 weeks of the year.

There’s More Than One Way to Skin a Search Engine

Not that there aren’t a few shortcuts to getting onto page one that do not ruffle Google’s feathers.  Here are a few that you can take to the bank:

1.      Press Releases – Online press releases are an excellent way to get your business featured on page one of Google in a hurry.  Just don’t expect to stay on page one for more than a few days.  When it comes to search, old news isn’t considered good news. 

2.      Optimized Blogs – Particularly if you use Blogger (owned by Google) to write article optimized blogs at least once per week, it is quite possible that your blog could find its way to page one in as little as 24 hours.  Like press releases, expect this position to quickly erode.

3.      Video SEO – Have you ever done a Google search only to find a thumbnail image that led to a YouTube video?  This is another example of cross-platform SEO in action.  Since Google owns YouTube, a properly optimized video can sometimes wind up on page one of the world’s most popular search engine.

Not only are blogs and videos a great way to jump onto page one of Google, but they can also generate 

Image via CrunchBase

a following of their own.  In fact, there are some enterprising people who make a comfortable living by publishing either blogs or YouTube videos.  Even if your videos don’t generate millions of hits per month, having hundreds or even several thousand motivated followers hanging on your every word can be a great way to generate results online. I can tell you from personal experience that we have had several clients generate more conversions from their blogs than they did from their page one search engine listings.  The reason is that on the search engines you are one of the herd.  On your blog you are the star.

So when it comes to putting search engine ranking into its proper perspective what you have to do is ask yourself one question, “Are you ready to do what it takes to play this game to win?”

When it comes to playing to win, Carl Weiss co-wrote the book on the subject.  He is also co-host of the weekly web radio show of the same name as well as the YouTube series.

The Best of the Best in 2013

By Carl Weiss

With Christmas only a day away, that means that New Year’s Eve can’t be far behind.  So as a little something extra for your Christmas stocking I thought a little retrospective on some of the topics we covered this year would be in order. 

Our Top 10 List

As far as our listeners were concerned, cybercrime was a hot topic.  In 2013 we produced a number of episodes on the many faces of cybercrime, including Bringing Down the Bitcoin Bandits and Chinese Hack Attack, both of which explored the ramifications of the dark side of the internet such as multimillion dollar black market websites and state sponsored hacking.  If you have been keeping a weather eye on the newsfeeds lately then you know that everyone from major retailers (Target) to banking institutions have been targeted by hackers recently.  Since these crimes are so hard to prosecute this only leads hackers into more brazen acts of online piracy that is only going to escalate in 2014.

Of course, our online privacy isn’t only being compromised by the bad guys it is also getting eroded

Google Appliance as shown at RSA Expo 2008 in San Francisco. It was only a computer case with no parts inside.-Daniel A (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

 from every corner of the web.  Google has been the subject of a number of international lawsuits from governments who say that the world’s most powerful search engine is taking liberties with the way it collects and disseminates information gleaned from people surfing the web.  The NSA has also been accused of overstepping its rights in the way that it collects data from the web as well as cellphone providers.  If anything these accusations are not going to go away any time soon and it won’t be long before a number of other online providers are pulled into the fray. (For more details, check out Is Privacy a Thing of the Past in the Cyber Age?)

Speaking of Google, 2013 saw the unleashing of The Humdinger Called Hummingbird, the most extensive algorithm update in the past 12 years.  Unlike most of the updates commissioned in the past which were targeted toward people trying to game the system, Hummingbird represents a sea change in the way that Google ranks sites.  Gone are the “Set it and forget it days,” when website owners could commission a new site every three years and expect it to climb onto page one with little effort.  Nowadays Google demands the full multimedia treatment, where things like blogging, social networking and even video content plays a large part in who gets onto page one.  They have also made Google+ a nexus where everything from Google Maps and reviews to Google Local has been rounded up and placed under one roof. 

That doesn’t mean that Google is the only entity who has been making major changes.  Facebook has also been busy tweaking the way their social network does business by adding video ads to the mix.  They have also made running a Facebook contest not only easier but cheaper.  In fact, they are giving them away at present.  (If you want to learn how go to How to Run a Facebook Contest for Free.) 

Other social nets including LinkedIn and Twitter mad our top ten list this year with Leveraging LinkedIn and Trick or Tweet covering many of the latest features added to these networks. 

Lights, Cameras Viral Video

YouTube also was wildly popular with listeners this year.  Both our Send in the Clones and Candid Camera for Everyone episodes covered the good, the bad and the ugly sides of the world’s largest superstation.  With 4 billion videos streamed per day in 2013, YouTube broadcasts more televised content than all the other stations on the planet rolled into one. 

2013 also saw the introduction of a number of new technologies, that we covered in Next Tech, including Google Glass, smartwatches such as Pebble and Samsung, and the rise of the 3-D printer.  (Did you know that they are planning on sending a 3-D printer to the International Space Station?)  As wearable technology becomes ever more prevalent it won’t be long before we are all forced to compete with everything from enhanced humans (A Borg in Every Boardroom)  to office automatons (Birth of the Bionic Man).   In January 2014 we have already scheduled an episode called Putting Your Best Bot Forward that will introduce you to the latest in bipedal robots that recently competed for a $2 million prize sponsored by DARPA.

So if you think that 2013 complicated your life by introducing a number of “out there” technologies, all I can say is fasten your seat belts because 2014 will test your sense of the incredible in more ways than you can imagine.

Carl Weiss has helps clients deal with technology on a daily basis.  He is president of W Squared Media Group, a digital marketing agency based in Jacksonville, Florida.  He also owns and operates Jacksonville Video Production, a digital video production company. 

The Humdinger Named Hummingbird

By Carl Weiss

You may have heard that Google recently released its latest algorithm update named Hummingbird.  What I find interesting is that Google always seems to name its updates after cute critters like pandas and penguins and hummingbirds.  Meanwhile their effect on many websites is more like being attacked by lions and tigers.  That being said, what I have brought you today is a cold, hard look at when, why and how search engines of all kinds insist on playing games with website owners,as well as what you can do to keep ahead of changes that can leave you stuck in the darkest regions of cyberspace.

What’s it all about?

Having worked the web professionally since 1995, I have seen a lot of changes over the past 18 years.  Back in the beginning, all you needed to get on page one of any search engine was a website.  This was in the days before blogs and social networks, before online video too, since there wasn’t enough bandwidth to stream video.  Search engine algorithms were pretty simple back then as well.  In fact, one of the easiest ways to get on page one in the 90’s was to research sites already on page one, since their code could be dissected and bested. This is one of the reasons that virtually every search engine was soon forced to start changing their algorithms on a regular basis.  You see it wasn’t long before everybody started to realize that you could beat the other site owners by stuffing more of the keywords you were after onto the page.  The crowd also realized that while the sentence, “online casino, online casino, online casino, online casino, online casino,” might get your site to the top of the heap, it wasn’t going to please most visitors.  This is when sharp operators started making these stuffed sentences the same color as the background, which meant that only the search engine spiders could read them.

Of course so could the webmasters of the search engines.  So they decided to up the ante by having owners begin soliciting backlinks, figuring that this was one way of showing the popularity of a website.  Within six months of this edict, entrepreneurs started spawning backlink farms where any site owner could acquire hundreds or even thousands of backlinks overnight.  This rankled the powers that be at the search engines since their spiders were not yet intelligent enough to detect farmed backlinks from the real McCoy.  However, in the tit for tat world of search engine operators, it wasn’t long before the spiders became ever more sophisticated. 

Bear in mind that before Google came onto the scene there were dozens of search engines that could provide viable traffic to businesses.  Even though there were a number of well entrenched operators, no one yet held anything like a monopoly.  What this meant is that if your site didn’t fare well on one search engine, you could always move your operation to another, many of which could be cracked in 24 hours.  Once the 800 lb gorilla in the room called Google went public, the game was changed and not for the better.

Search Engine Market Share 1999

AltaVista: 15.5%

HotBot: 11.3%

MSN Search: 8.5%

Infoseek: 8.0%
Google: 7.8%
Yahoo: 7.4%

Excite: 5.6%
Lycos: 2.5%

Google Gets Into the Game.

On August 19, 2004 Google went public.  By July of 2005, its market share had grown to 30.5 percent of search.  A year after that, it control raised to 41.4 percent of search.  By 2010 Google controlled 71 percent of search. Yahoo by this point was down to less than 15 percent and Bing came in third with 9.3 percent.  What this meant to site owners was that they were now forced to answer the question, “What do you feed an 800 lb gorilla?  Anything it wants.”

What Does Google Want?

What Google wants today is content and lots of it.  Nowadays it isn’t enough to have links to your blogs, videos and social sites on your homepage.  Now you are actually expected to feed them regularly.

In a blog entitled “What HummingbirdMeans for Small Business SEO,” searchenginewatch.com posted:

“Websites can't grow their entrance pages without introducing new content regularly. While hard to believe, there are many webmasters who don't update their websites, have no blog, and refuse any assistance.  While introducing new pages of helpful, high-quality content is a great start, Webmasters and small business owners need to be very creative to be noticed.

·         Newsjack hot stories in their areas of expertise.

·         Create infographics.

·         Make videos to post on YouTube.

·         Utilize staff to promote in social media.”

The Pearl Harbor of Algorithm Updates

Worst of all for many website owners was the fact that Hummingbird was launched as a kind of sneak attack, with Google dropping the bomb without warning which had the effect of taking many website owners by surprise. Newswire.net reported that,

“In the past, Google’s Panda and Penguin updates have struck fear in the hearts of SEOs as they watched their clients’ rankings plummet. While Panda and Penguin affected 1% or 2% and still caused panic, this new update is reported to affect the majority of search results and no one noticed until the announcement was made a month later.  The last Google update that replaced this much of the search engine was in 2010 with the ‘Caffeine’ update. Caffeine introduced the ‘live search’ and keyword suggestion tools, and many people seem to have forgotten the huge emphasis that it placed on social signals. This new update is possibly even more dramatic since it appears Google now understands the intentions of the words carried in these social signals.” http://www.newswire.net/newsroom/pr/00077509-google-hummingbird-favors-human-speech.html

What it boils down to is that Google is only going to give high ranking to websites that provide a complete

 multi-media experience to visitors.  This means the age of “Set it and forget it” websites is at an end and that using trickery to garner a high position is no longer going to be possible.  It also means that what was traditionally considered to be SEO-friendly will become as obsolete as many of the search engines that used to rule cyberspace.  (AltaVista, the titan of the search engine world back in 1999 went dark for good in 2010 after seeing its share of the market reduced to two tenths of one percent.)

So if you don’t want to wind up relegated to the bone heap online, you need to create a corporate culture that is designed to feed a world wide web that is hungry for content, before Google’s next cute critter decides to take a bite out of your web presence.

Carl Weiss is president of W Squared Media Group, a digital marketing agency that offers guaranteed organic placement on a number of major search engines.  He also owns Jacksonville Video Production and co-hosts the weekly online radio show Working the Web to Win every Tuesday at 4 pm Eastern.