When you SEO, you can attempt to deceive the search engines, and you can attempt to deceive internet users. Neither is a good strategy for the long-term success of your website.
*The old bait ‘n’ switch – Whenever your pages don’t match their descriptions in the search engines, internet users will suspect spam. This is an old black hat trick, but it can also happen naturally. Even if your pages simply don’t fulfil the promises made by your listing in the search engine results pages, you can be in trouble.
*Sneaky keywords – the average black hat search engine optimisation agency liked to sneak keywords into any available space on a web page, hoping to sneak them by site users. Not only did this behaviour infuriate the search engines, it annoyed internet users as well. Internet users aren’t blind, even to tiny fonts.
Search engine deceptions
*Cloaking – search engines hate being fooled, and that’s what cloaking amounts to. Showing the search engines content they’ll like while showing internet users different content just isn’t worth it.
*Relevance fake-outs – many sites try to build keyword relevance by dumping relevant words through off-topic text. The result makes for a very strange read, and often doesn’t work as a relevance booster.
*Just about every black hat trick in the book – the reason a reputable SEO company will avoid black hat techniques is because they simply aren’t that good compared with reputable tactics. Talk to us at SEO Consult about your options.
As you can see, most of these deceptions are unwise simply because they don’t work in the long term. Considering the amount of effort it takes to create such tactics and then fix them after your ranking falls, you’re far better off sticking with straightforward, quality organic search engine optimisation.