ireckon blog

Black Hat Series No. 2 - Black Hat SEO Penalties

Posted by: Andy on 5 May 2008 @ 10:27 pm Category: Search Engine Optimisation

OK, so you've heard that Black Hat SEO techniques can give you a quick (and sometimes massive) boost in rankings and traffic. Sounds just like what you are after? But what are the implications of using some of these techniques? What are the risks involved?

This is post #2 in The Black Hat Series - a series of blog posts aimed at educating website owners about the the promise and pitfalls of Black Hat SEO strategies and techniques. The 1st post in this series outlined some of the differences between Black Hat and White Hat optimisation techniques. This post describes some of the implications of using optimisation strategies which contravene search engine guidelines.

Now, I should highlight at this stage, that Search Engines rarely discuss publicly the issue of search penalties, so much of the debate within the search marketing industry is speculation based on real experiences. The different types of penalties mentioned on this post are also speculative, named (usually by the industry) to help describe the symptom or supposed cause.

Types of Search Penalties

There are two main types of punishments that a search engine may impose, and it is important to differentiate between them.

Being Banned means your site is removed from the index completely. This is reasonably rare - and in fact many people who think they've been banned are actually still in the index. It is reasonably easy to tell whether you have been banned by Google - assuming your site was in the index to begin with, search Google for site:yourdomain.com.au. If you get any results, your site has not been banned.

Being Penalised means having your rank reduced. Unless you have not been carrying out regular rank reporting, determining this type of penalty (and the extent of it) can be difficult. If you've noticed a drop in the rankings of some of your key phrases it doesn't necessarily mean that your site has been penalised. Rankings change, sites drop (and often rise again) - it's all part of the way the search engines work. However, if you have noticed a significant drop in your rankings, across all phrases - particularly if all rankings seem to have dropped by a similar amount (e.g. dropped 40 positions - or 4 pages), there is a reasonable chance that your site has been penalised.

Further information about some different types of penalties that may be imposed by Search Engines can be found at :

• Over Over Optimisation Penalty (OOP)
• Google -950 Penalty
• Google Minus 30 Penalty
  

There are also a number of reasonably high profile sites which appear to have been hit with penalties over the last few years - apparently for the use of black hat techniques.

• Flight Centre Cloaking
  
• BMW Cloaking results in Google Ban
• Found Agency penalised for "Black Hat" techniques
  

Because of the speculative nature of penalties, not everything that's perceived to be a penalty necessarily is. The "Duplicate Content Penalty", although it may have a net effect of poor rankings for your site, is unlikely to be a penalty as such, more a failure to ascribe value to content on your site if the same content appears elsewhere. See the Duplicate Content Penalty Myth.

Look out for more posts in The Black Hat Series... The 3rd post entitled "Search Engine Guidlines" reviews some of the guidelines outlined by the major search engines, and discuss the pros and cons of following them, and the 4th post - "Help !! my website has been penalised - What Can I Do ?" will look at what options you have if your site has been penalised or banned.

Back to blog home

Comments

Leave a comment