In the previous post, we learned what is Black Hat SEO, and why it is used by a lot of people. Let us see some of the most common ways in which Black Hat SEO is used by webmasters.

Keyword Stuffing & Stacking:

Both these terms are used interchangeably by people. We all have come across webpages where some terms have been used again & again, sometimes even invisible to users. Keyword stuffing & stacking is one of the oldest methods used to trick search engines & search engines are well aware of this and are always on a lookout for such websites. Though their will be times when such pages go unnoticed by the search engines.

Hiding Keywords:

Another trick is to hide the text from the user so that the user cannot see it but the search engine can easily pick up the keywords and end up optmizing the webpage for that keyword. Keyword hiding is often used with keyword stuffing.

One way to find out if someone is using these techniques is pressing ctrl + A together; This highlights all the text on the page. Another way is to check the page source. Goto View –> Page Source.

One of the most common ways to hide the text on a webpage:

• Making the text color the same as the background color. After all, white color text will not be visible on white background, will it?
• Using hidden fields ie <INPUT TYPE = “HIDDEN”>
• Placing text inside <NOSCRIPT> tags.
• Placing text inside <NOFRAMES> tags.
• Using Hidden layers.

Duplicating Pages :

Some website developers make duplicate pages or even duplicate sites with the intent to gain top position in the rankings. If you can duplicate some pages that already rank decently, you can rank in top 10 for major search engines.

Page Swapping :

A very little known and used technique, a page is placed in a website and after it attains a good ranking is placed back in a less optimized page.

Page Jacking :

Some webmasters steal other high ranking websites pages that perform well to get a boost in their ranking, even if for some time.