There are Black SEO methods and there are White Hat SEO methods. Why they are called that way have a lot to do with the good and the bad; and sometimes the consequences can be ugly. Black Hat SEO methods are generally the best way to ensure your site gets nixed by the search engines. **In fact, if you would like your site to be ranked right up there with the Black Hat giants such as BMW and RICHO in Germany, go ahead and blatantly use some of the available Black Hat SEO methods available. “Spamming” is the mantra of Black Hat SEO. A typical Black Hat SEO would stuff a website with keywords to increase its relevance and cloak the content by setting it in the same color as the website’s background. Another method of Black Hat SEO is to create a web site, stuff it with keywords, and then re-direct the link to another website, one that is user-friendly. If your venture is to have any long-term value, Black Hat should not considered a viable option. In fairness to Black Hat SEO, results are quick and in many cases have great short term benefits. There are many people making their fortunes using unscrupulous methods. However, these ventures have no long-term value proposition. You will just be promoting one empty scam after another. Black Hat SEO is still not worth risking for many reasons. A few of them include: Getting Removed By Search Engines: Google recently dropped many websites for using black SEO methods. Website owners better keep in mind that Google does not hesitate to remove websites on its index for black hat offenses. Short-Term Results: Being illegal, at least where the search engines are concerned only means that black hat SEOs must constantly change tactics or be caught in the long-term, and for your website to removed from the index of search engines. Incoherence: Cloaking (one fo the methods used to subvert the search engines) is not meant for website viewers to see, but there are times when viewers see what is actually on the website. Viewing a “spam” website is not the best experience any one can have. Imagine those keywords getting repeated over and over on a web page. Yes, they sound gibberish and look like garbage. But Surprise… Surprise!!!… they are not for you to see anyway. They are for Google, Yahoo! and MSN. Get caught and you’re screwed. Being in the Dark: Black hat SEO involves deceptive methods that are invisible except only to the programmer. If you are a website owner, you risk the chances of being in the dark as to what is being done to your website on your behalf. You might get the surprise of your life when you can’t find your website anywhere in the search engines. Black Hat SEO May be Unlawful: Black Hat SEO might get flagged for violations of deceptive marketing laws found in the United States, in the United Kingdom and elsewhere around the world. Some of these laws were implemented even before the invention of the Internet, and it would not make sense for the industry not to comply with these laws. A case was filed before the FTC against the search engines in 2001 for listing paid advertisers high on search engine results, making them look like they were part of organic results. Interpreting these laws so that they cover Black Hat SEO is inevitable. ** If your website is caught using these methods, expect to be removed from the index of search engines, like what happened to Ricoh Germany and BMW Germany in February 2006. (Both companies promptly apologized, fixed their pages, and were restored in Google’s index.) Keep in mind that it is doubtful that Google will be as receptive to your apologies. black hat seo� search engine optimization� search engine placement� black hat seo, search engine optimization, search engine placement

Posted by rebeccaMy favorite Cameron with an unconventionally spelled last name (other than Cameron Frye in Ferris Bueller's Day Off), Cameron Olthuis, wrote a post on Search Engine Land called "5 Reasons to Put Viral Content on Mini-Sites." Now, obviously Cameron isn't arguing that you should always use mini-sites (aka a separate domain) when launching viral content--he simply posits that there are instances where using mini-sites is a good idea. (Apparently 37% of "very experienced marketers" agree with him, as, according to an eMarketer.com study, about 1/3 think that "cool microsites" produce great results...though I think the percentage doesn't seem that that high.) Fine and dandy, Cameron. I thought, however, I'd remind everyone why you wouldn't want to split content onto mini-sites (once again, this isn't a dig at Cameron's article, it's just here to complement/bookend his points): You run the risk of sandboxing a new domain, meaning there's a chance the content won't rank at all. I'm not saying this will happen every time, but chances are the new domain won't be as strong as the original domain. You're not getting all that nice, new traffic to your main domain. You're splitting link value, meaning... ...you're not helping your main content rank better; instead, you're now tasked with ranking two sites well. Users may not get the connection. If your company has a super-rad viral thingamabob that you put on a separate site, people might go "Cool!" without ever putting 2 and 2 together, that it is your company's product/brainchild/whatever. Of course, you can still register a separate domain for a viral marketing launch and then just 301 it to your main domain. We did just that with the Web 2.0 Awards (coming next week, we promise!)--initially, we launched the awards on a separate domain, web2.0awards.org. After a while, we 301'd it to seomoz.org/web2.0, which brought SEOmoz a healthy 100k+ backlinks. Now we rank (I'm seeing 11th) for the term "web 2.0," and we receive a good amount of traffic from it every day. Obviously, Cameron's five reasons for mini-sites and my five reasons against them combine to form a superset of "It's a judgment call." Wildly successful viral marketing launches have kicked the crap out of my five reasons, while smaller, less successful launches may have learned to keep such tactics on their main domain in the future. I'd be mindful of both the risks and the rewards, and decide for yourself what's more worthwhile. That's about it. I'll close with the following: When Cameron blogged at Search Engine Land...let my Cameron...gooooooooo. Long live Ferris Bueller's Day Off.