Black Hat SEO Still Works with Google
EVERGREEN, CO — I’ve been a fan of white-hat SEO for many years. After all, Google likes white-hat SEO, and from its early years, I have promoted Google for its accurate search results. In my opinion, the main reason for Google’s success has been that its team of engineers in the anti-spam department, headed by Matt Cutts, has worked tirelessly for many years to prevent spammers from exploiting SEO techniques in order to rank themselves above the competition, when those types of tactics don’t deserve Google’s approval.
Matt and his team’s work has been no small task as new black-hat techniques are created on a daily basis by websites looking to shortcut their way to the top – at the expense of quality websites on the Internet.
However, it surprises me that Google is still unable to detect old black-hat SEO techniques. For example, a few days ago, I was shocked to see one of our peers’ sites securing a #5 rank on Google organic results for “Best SEO” using (for the most part) black-hat SEO techniques. Interestingly, Google has known most of these techniques for years. So, I’m wondering how they get away with tricking Google.
Image Courtesy of SeoBook.com.
Matt… if you’re reading this, please write a post and let us know how this website slipped through the cracks of your genius team – especially that they’re affiliated with SEOmoz.org, which I’m really proud of for their great SEO software development.
The site in question is: www.localseocompany.net.
The keyword I searched for is: Best SEO
The page that comes up #5 is: http://www.localseocompany.net/best-seo-company/
And now the main black-hat techniques they’ve used:
- Keyword Stuffing: the site mentions “SEO” exactly 40 times. The term “best SEO” has been repeated 20 times.
- Excess use of H1 tags: there are seven H1 tags throughout the code of this page.
- Self-linking anchored texts: there are 21 links on this page using anchored texts that are linking to the page itself – thus sending Googlebot in circles.
Interestingly enough, this page has ZERO inbound links (however, the root domain is very popular getting links from sites such as Adobe and SEOMoz.org).
Leave your thoughts and comments; I’m interested to know what you think of this.
Please note: I’m not going to report this page to Google for SEO malpractice – because I honestly think Google should have been able to detect it by itself.
Our notes have been made only because we love Google and we want it to stay at the top of the game in regards to being the best search engine out there.
I am wondering if there is such a loophole as found by the people, like you mentioned Ali. I know there are millions of people who thrive with their SEO efforts, getting knowledge using their time and money to become familiar with Google’s anatomy and show patience for their efforts, but there shouldn’t be those people who find shortcut to bypass everything using deceptive tactics. If so, then I am also with you and I also like to go through what Matt Cutts says about that. Thank you for such a deep view and to make people aware about that.
My questions is: Why do we even need to use SEO? Isn’t the purpose of a search engine to find the information and display it, ranked by how relevant it is?
I still lay on seo? black hat seo is not banned by google search?
regards small seo
yudi
awesome analysis, some of the words are even not formatted nicely. lol
Hi Justin,
Thank you for your question. I find that your last sentence of your comment answers it. “The purpose of a search engine to find the information and display it, ranked by how relevant it is”. Google does this by using keywords. If you provide these keywords in a way that ranks your site above the rest for those keywords, that is effective SEO. So SEO is vital to websites that want to get ahead. Hope that answers your question.
- Megan
This is an okay article, but I dispute much of what you’ve said. While the page does have some obvious SEO attempts going on, I’d hardly call this “black hat”.
Wow, surprising, a page dedicated to SEO has the word SEO a lot. If we were looking at keyword stuffing, the page would look a lot more messy. This page is still readable and makes sense.
The inner-linking is obviously returning a list of relevant search terms people use to get to that page, which IMHO is a pretty good resource. The site also dedicates itself to teaching SEO (not just selling it).
I would agree with you if the site didn’t provide a ton of useful and relevant content, but it does. And honestly, since you asked for it, my opinion is that this post is misleading. Not that I care about the company at all, but you seem to be treating them fairly harshly :/
Hi Joshua,
Thank you for your thoughtful feedback. We do not aim to be harsh, rather to hold other sites up to the same standards that we hold ourselves up to. We have our shortcomings, too, and feel that by admitting that, we can also have other sites admit to some of their practices that need to be changed or improved upon. A critical but professional review was the intent of this article, and it is because of our competitors as much as our clients and our team, that we continuously strive to be better SEO professionals.
Thanks again for reading,
Megan
It’s not just content either. There are loads of black (or at least grey) tricks out there for getting rankings. These aren’t long lasting techniques though, sites will fall eventually.
@Justin Emmons
Hi Justin,
Search Engines need help in determining what’s “relevant” and that’s what SEO companies are supposed to do. Also, we are responsible to improve a client’s “popularity” by promoting them online. That will also help Google recognize them as “relevant”.
@Joshua T
It seems you DO CARE for this company, otherwise, you wouldn’t defend it. Here are some examples of how they’re writing ONLY for the search engines and don’t care for the readers:
“All the best SEO firms are happy…” (Grammatical error – Best of something is always singular)
The second paragraph is funny when you read it. “Best SEO” is being repeated four times and except the first one they’re all out of place and grammatically make absolutely no sense.
Also, the fact that the page is linking to itself has absolutely NO VALUE for the reader and the practice is only intended to trick the search engines. I ask you this: if this is not “black-hat” then what is black-hat?
To see examples of SEO gaming, one does not have to go very far. Just google “SEO ” and see who comes up. I know for my area, Atlanta, that the top dogs are sites that utilize several black-hat techniques. They have spammed “best SEO atlanta” on their local seo page such that the verbiage does not even make sense. I counted 65 times. Doing a little research, I found many other examples of various black-hat techniques.
We all know there are a lot of honest and folks that rank high, but they got there by hard work and persistence. It is just a little frustrating having to compete with those that game the system.
I have checked the site and although they have repeated the keyword,s this is not keyword stuffing as I know it. The article still makes sense, but maybe with latest Google announcement on over-optimization, this sort of thing will now be punished.
great post i will try and infom you
the keyword is still ranking, where is the google algo.
I too am very disheartened about what has happen to Google. They have lost control of their product of White Hat SEO. As I see it, no one at Google is policing the Black Hat SEO Techniques that websites are using.
You can search any word and find these tricksters on the first page of Google. Just hover your mouse to the right of the link description to access the double arrows. Click the Cached link, you will see the search term you searched, highlighted throughout the page below.
Google Webmaster Tools instructs us not to do keyword stuffing, but all of us white hat SEO companies are not being helped by Google.
Who at Google is watching what happens?
Anthony
Hello!
I am new to SEO. Just wanted to know what I am doing is black hat seo?
I have a website with 2 targeted keywords on my homepage. I have the first keyword repeated 20 times and the other keyword 18 times on my homepage.
I used SEO precessor plugin to check my keyword density and it says my keyword density on homepage is 1.8% because I usually have very long post on my homepage?
So do I need to remove some of the keywords so that instead of repeating 20 times I would repeat 12 to 15 times?
Please help me pls…
@Adam
Remove the repeated keywords.
@Adam
Everything up to density of 4-5% should be fine. Of course, if you have have keyword density of 20 or 25%, it does not only look suspicious, it’s quite difficult to read.
Try to use different variations of your keywords and if possible, maybe make them bold as well
The page is not coming up #5 anymore… So maybe Google fixed the issue. BTW… Our site ranks #2… So White Hat Pays Off At The End.