With the use of more sophisticated analysis and reporting tools, it has been a long time since search engines started penalising websites employing black hat techniques. However, the imitable Matt Cutts from Google has shown that the nefarious SEO practice is still an issue.
Any UK firm wishing to perform well as an online business needs to get its marketing right. To deliver this, those companies performing best tend to use strategists working to white hat techniques, essentially creating content for humans.
Conversely, black hatting is all about tricking search engines. Quite rightly, search engines do not like to be conned and, whether using hidden links, cloaking or other devices, a great deal of work goes into preventing it.
Continuing its more transparent approach, the biggest engine of them all has revealed just how heavy that workload is.
In a recent YouTube Video, Cutts revealed that 90 percent of the messages it sends through its Webmaster tools were related to black hat techniques.
Google’s head of webspam continued to explain that four percent of the notifications are related to content offering the user little value; three percent regards hacking, two per cent about link buying and one per cent over link selling.
It all makes very interesting viewing for anyone with a passing interest in search engine optimisation. For those in the field though, it fails to really deliver usable advice, such as what black hat techniques are most commonly used.
If this can be delivered, and packaged in a user-friendly way for consumers too, perhaps the landscape for the internet of the present, and the future, would be a good deal more pleasing.
- What are the nuts and bolts of digital marketing? - September 10, 2020
- What is Google RankBrain and how do you use it? - September 9, 2020
- Three dos (and three don’ts) of writing great content - September 4, 2020
