Abstract
In the quest for top search engine rankings, companies
can leverage ethical or unethical techniques to attain
those coveted top spots. The methods used to "trick" search
engines into artificially inflating a web site's position
are numerous. When such companies use these search
engine optimization (SEO) techniques, it is a choice
that carries with it the risk of substantial negative
consequences.
Introduction
As the Internet has grown from a tool of the education
sector to a revolution in global communication, people
have come to realize how critical it is to rank their
web sites high in the search engines. This is the primary
way a web site connects to its target audience. Many
companies' profitability hinges on how well they show
up in the three largest search engines: Google, MSN
Search and Yahoo. With this increase in search engine
awareness also brings companies and individuals that
can assist clients in obtaining those prized top spots.
This process is called search engine optimization (SEO).
It involves adjusting a web site content and HTML code
as well as increasing the links coming to it from other
web sites (Google 2008). The goal is to outrank the
competition and bring in more visitors.
As ethical SEO techniques have grown over the last
15 years, so have the underhanded ones (also known
as black hat techniques). It has been argued that such
tactics are unethical since they are methods that attempt
to trick the search engines into rankings web sites
artificially high. Many of these companies make claims
such as "Just $99 for a top spot in Google. Guaranteed!" Others
undertake click fraud where they repeatedly click on
competitors sponsored search engine listings so the
unfortunate recipient is charged for each click (Kent,
2006). This paper will focus on black hat SEO and the
unethical behavior that drives it. It will delve into
the finer points of SEO processes as well as how the
community of SEO professionals view what is ethical
and what is not. What after all makes a given SEO technique
ethical or unethical (Whalen, 2004)? If it is true
that as a person grows, retaining integrity may involve
some sacrifice to live up to ones principles (May,
1996), then what compels these SEO companies to practice
black hat SEO? It is important to note that there are
many professionals and companies within the SEO industry
that strive to work in an ethical manner.
What Is SEO?
SEO involves the on-web site and off-web site strategies
that people can use to improve their search engine
rankings (Ledford, 2008). The process is usually part
of a larger marketing effort designed to increase target
audience exposure and profitability. The importance
of SEO continues to grow and can be better understood
using the analogy of a beautiful store located on a
dirt road in the middle of a barren landscape. It matters
very little how well the store is organized, decorated,
or operated since it is very unlikely people will find
it unless they happen to be traveling down that particular
dirt road. The same is true for web sites that do not
undergo SEO to improve their search engine exposure.
People are unlikely to find such sites. SEO has been
around as long as there have been web sites. Since
the early 1990s, there has been a growing effort to
use SEO techniques effectively for organizations and
companies throughout the world (Seda, 2004). The explosion
of the Internet as a communication medium has also
led to the abundance of consultants who claim, with
or without merit, to have knowledge in the area of
SEO. Search engine marketing in general also includes
Pay Per Click (PPC), or paid placement, wherein companies
bid on words and phrases and, when users enter these
phrases into search engines, their site appears in
the sponsored listings area of the search results (Blankson,
2004). PPC is not covered within this paper since the
unethical techniques being described here do not apply
(except for click fraud which will be discussed later).
A successful SEO initiative involves a series of phases.
The first phase involves analyzing a web site's goals,
audiences, and competition, as well as finding the
best words and phrases that audiences are using to
find similar companies. Once these phrases have been
identified, phase two can begin. The web site content
is carefully sculpted to include these key phrases
at a certain frequency. The underlying HTML code is
also modified in a number of ways. The final phase
involves increasing the number of other web sites that
link to the target web site. This is known as inbound
linking. When a web site is finally posted on the Internet,
each of the search engines sends out a spider which
is a small program that reads through a web site and
tries to discern what the site is about so that it
can be indexed correctly. Once the site is indexed,
it can be found in the search engines.
There are plenty of books and online materials detailing
the various processes involved in SEO. The vast majority
of these processes is completely acceptable to the
search engines and is used by most SEO professionals.
A minority of individuals however use black hat optimization
tactics to increase rankings. If detected by the search
engines or alerted to the issue by another individual,
such sites can be penalized or removed entirely from
the search engine's index (Jones, 2006).
What is Black Hat SEO?
In many ways, the Internet is like the American Wild
West of old. So many of the technologies that interact
with the Internet continue to grow and evolve. There
are no laws that restrict how web site owners structure
their sites in order to enhance their search engine
rankings. So in this Wild West, some individuals knowledgeable
in SEO take advantage of any tactic available to help
a web site obtain top rankings. Leveraging these black
hat techniques is also known as search engine spamming.
Jerri Ledford (2008) defines spamming as: "Pages created
deliberately to trick the search engines into offering
inappropriate, redundant, or poor quality search results" (p.
185). What follows is a list of the most commonly
identified unscrupulous SEO techniques.
- Keyword Stuffing. This process
involves adding an inflated number of targeted key
phrases within a web page. Search engines discern
what a web page is about by primarily analyzing its
textual content. Keyword stuffing artificially inflates
certain phrases to trick the search engines into
ranking the page higher than it rightly deserves.
A common way to accomplish keyword stuffing is to
simply repeat the targeted phrase over and over within
a block of text usually at the end of a web site
page. However, there is a genuine dilemma in that
it is hard to identify at what point is the frequency
of a keyword or phrase too high and therefore will
trip the search engines into categorizing the page
as keyword stuffed (Ledford, 2008).
- Doorway Pages. Doorway pages,
also known as gateway or portal pages are sculpted
and optimized for a certain keyword or phrase. They
act as a doorway into a web site by ranking very
high in the search engines for that phrase (Arsenault,
2006). Usually such pages are crafted to exploit
as many search engine ranking tactics as possible
yet are typically unattractive and hard to understand
since they have not been created with the human eye
in mind.
- Bait and Switch. This tactic involves
creating an optimized page for the search engines
to index yet once the page is indexed, quickly replacing
it with one that is more user-centered and attractive
(www.seoglossary.com/article/662). The goal is to
obtain high rankings with the first version of the
page but showing the public the second version.
- Cloaking. Cloaking involves delivering
one page to a search engine for indexing while serving
an entirely different page to regular visitors (www.webreference.com/authoring/search_engines/cloaking/).
A programming script is used to execute this real-time
black hat tactic. Some SEO administrators will use
this tactic on what are known as throwaway web sites.
They use cloaking to garner as much traffic (and
profit) as possible until the search engines become
aware of the issue and take the site down (Ledford,
2008). Then they move on to a new cloaking endeavor.
- Hidden/Small Text and Links. Since
a web page ranks well for a certain phrase if that
phrase appears at a high-frequency, many black hat
SEO individuals try to color such text the same as
the web page background (and therefore render it
invisible to the human eye) or make the text so small
that it is not noticed (Blankson, 2008). Search engines
also give additional weight to a page if a phrase
shows up within a hyperlink to another page. So a
similar tactic is to change the color of the link
to the color of the surrounding text. Recently, the
search engines are more adept at spotting these tactics
(Ledford, 2008).
- Page Jacking. Content theft is
a better label for this approach. This tactic involves
stealing content from a web site and copying it into
another web site in order to siphon off some of the
original site's traffic to the newly copied web page.
People can then be tricked into thinking an illegitimate
site is the actual site they were looking for (www.webopedia.com/TERM/P/pagejacking.html).
In some cases, the illegitimate site will have links
to pornographic web sites. Fortunately, site administrators
now have tools to scan the Internet for instances
of duplicate web copy and can fight such plagiarism
(Jones, 2008). If an entire web site is found to
be "jacked," the crime could result in
stiff fines or even jail time (Ledford, 2008).
- Spamming of Social Media. Blogs,
wikis and discussion forums are just a few examples
of how people can more efficiently interact with
each other on the Internet (Young, 2006). This social
networking environment (a large component of what
is known as Web 2.0) is ripe for SEO abuse. One of
the prime reasons that the explosion of social networking
has gotten the attention of SEO companies is the
fact that there are so many opportunities to increase
the amount of links pointing back to a web site (inbound
linking). For example, if you post 20 messages on
different blogs and each message includes a signature
line with a link to your web site, all of those links
will help to raise your search engine rankings. However,
this environment can easily be exploited since vast
numbers of posts can be added to online discussions
and yet offer no substantive value to the topic at
hand. Some companies go as far as to create spam
blogs which are machine generated blogs whose only
purpose is to enhance search engine rankings (Ledford,
2008). As a defense against this automated spamming
technique, many sites utilize CAPTCHA (Completely
Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and
Humans Apart) where an individual must type in a
word or phrase displayed in a graphic appearing on
the page. Automated scripts cannot bypass this measure
since they cannot "read" the graphical
image and discern the text (Jones, 2008). Paid blogging
is another tactic where people are paid to offer
a review of a product or service on their own blog.
Though bloggers are expected to be truthful in their
reviews, there is potential for ethical abuse since
they are getting paid and the hope is he or she will
continue to get offers for paid reviews by the same
company (Jones, 2008). So generally they rate products
and services favorably.
- Click Fraud. Tom McGovern president
of snap.com indicated click fraud was a "billion-dollar
problem" (news.cnet.com/Click-fraud-roils-search-advertisers/2100-1024_3-5600300.html).
The basic form of the unethical process involves
a person or persons repeatedly clicking on their
competitors sponsored listings in the search engine
results pages. Each time a person clicks on a sponsored
listing link, the sponsoring company is charged a
small amount (for example $.50). This black hat technique
is known as dumb clicking, the crudest type of click
fraud (Kent, 2006). There are other forms of click
fraud but the underlying goal is the same, drain
your competitors marketing budget. It is the most
troublesome of SEO problems and unfortunately is
very hard to identify and control (Ledford, 2008).
Large search engines like Google and Yahoo do not
expose the amount of click fraud that they have detected.
However, it has been estimated that between 5% and
20% of their total search engine sponsored listing
sales are the result of click fraud (news.cnet.com/Click-fraud-roils-search-advertisers/2100-1024_3-5600300.html).
Overall, search engine spammers are constantly trying
to find new ways to exploit the search engines so they
can inflate their web site rankings. To combat this,
search engines regularly update their definitions of
spam. Previously people caught conducting click fraud
schemes would, for example, receive the equivalent
of a slap on the wrist. However, more recently search
engine companies are imposing steep fines and criminal
prosecution for the worst offenders (Ledford, 2008).
It is an ongoing cat and mouse game in the Internet
frontier.
Who Cares?
Almost all SEO companies state that they use only
ethical techniques when they service client web sites.
So why is SEO spamming unethical or wrong? No police
officers will ever break down your door due to such
activities. The only tangible consequence that can
occur if a person is found to be using black hat techniques
(except for page jacking and click fraud ) is they
will have their web site blacklisted (removed) from
the particular search engine. If the culprit is selling
their services to a client, than the repercussions
fall completely on the paying customer's web site,
and the perpetrator can move on and continue to exploit
other unsuspecting customers. If, however, the perpetrator
is associated with the web site itself, then getting
blacklisted on the search engines can be a death knell
for the company or organization's online success.
It is true that sometimes ethical SEO professionals
get inadvertently caught by search engine spamming
rules and can be penalized. If the search engine companies
find it to be an honest mistake, it can still take
several months or longer for the web site to reenter
the index at which point the struggle for high rankings
must be restarted (Ledford, 2008).
Many would argue that there is a lack of common sense
when turning to black hat techniques in search engine
marketing (Ledford, 2008). From a users perspective,
if a person clicks on what they think is a relevant
web site to their Internet search and it is not, they
will promptly leave. So inflating a web site artificially
when its content does not inherently justify its enhanced
positioning will not bring about goal attainment since
as soon as people arrive at the site, they will realize
they have been tricked and promptly move on. Overall,
the SEO community is in agreement that the risks far
outweigh the potential benefits of black hat SEO. And
finally, there is the lack of web site exposure and
loss of profits should a site be blacklisted. All of
these work to scare many SEO professionals from treading
down this path.
There is no indication that black hat SEO individuals
possess any unusual common thread that sets them apart
ethically from their above-board counterparts. Ethics
is focused on moral situations (Ruggiero, 2004) and
a moral choice here is whether or not search engine
professionals should abide by industry-accepted rules
of conduct, or break those rules. Computer professionals
are commonly self-regulated by their respective organizations
or employers (Johnson, 2004). Therefore a black hat
SEO company can convey to their employees the idea
that search engine spamming is acceptable since it
maintains their collective employment. A second moral
issue at hand is fairness. By using these techniques,
black hat optimized web sites are unfairly outranking
more deserving web sites and skewing the search engine
results so they become less useful to the public (Ledford,
2008). Developing a code of ethics would be the first
step in maintaining a company's dedication to accepted
regulation of search engine marketing. Some in the
SEO industry are self employed however (Thelwall, 2006).
They could develop a code strictly for themselves;
although such an action is unlikely. What complicates
the matter further is there is very little legislation
on these issues and an unethical SEO professional can
work out from any number of countries where foreign
laws have little or no affect (Thelwall, 2006). So
why do people still use these tactics? It comes down
to the fact that top rankings equal more money, and
it is extremely easy to garner additional clients if
said clients have no idea of the SEO individual's unethical
reputation. Companies will pay for help in attaining
high rankings and are often unaware their consultants
are leveraging these precipitous techniques. SEO professionals
with a strong sense of right and wrong will typically
avoid black hat techniques entirely. On the playing
field of the Internet, black hat is cheating, and in
the community of search engine professionals, there
is no love for those who skirt the rules that the honest
segment is working within. As to why individuals choose
to take part in these unethical practices, it could
be due to the content of their organizational environment
. That is, if the group or company views this practice
as acceptable, then the individual is are more likely
to take part (Banerjee, Cronan & Jones, 1998).
Naturally, a person's internal moral compass will also
come into play. It may also be attributable to the
lack of ethical education that some information technology
professionals receive in college. Michael Quinn, dean
of the College of Science and Engineering at Seattle
University conducted a survey in 2006 where he found
that only 55% of computer science programs require
their students to take an ethics class (Tennant, 2007).
Without adequate grounding in ethics, black hat SEO
professionals may be ignorant about where unethical
search engine marketing lines are drawn.
Conclusions
Black hat SEO is not going away. There is a sizable
percentage of the SEO industry that will use any means
available to achieve high search engine rankings. It
can be argued that there are a number of reasons why
these individuals partake in these unethical tactics,
yet the main driving force is monetary gain. It is
naïve to think that SEO professionals engaged
in these activities are unaware of the repercussions
or the disdain they will receive from fellow search
engine marketers. Fast cash drives this segment of
Internet marketing. A prominent tenet in SEO is, if
you build genuinely useful, easy to navigate web sites,
the users and rankings will come (Arsenault, 2006).
This approach has proven to be true but can take considerable
time to materialize into sizable rankings success.
Due to the nature of how search engines sift through
and index the incredibly large number of web sites
on the Internet, this idea of skirting the rules does
not look to be fading away. Those who work the back
alleys of search engine marketing realize there is
money to be had in black hat SEO even if they flirt
with blacklisting and risk being labeled as industry
outcasts.
Paul Kaufman
President
Pitch Perfect Marketing
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