Top 10 web design firms use black-hat SEO
Posted by Henrik Madsen on August 25, 2008
Notwithstanding websites that still employ old-hat tables and in-line styles, it seems several of our contemporaries are wearing black hats when it comes to search engine optimization. SEO is of course the ‘art and science’ of gaining better placement in search results and there’s certainly no lack of artistry when it comes to leading WA web design firms.
Among other things, the process of optimizing a website for search involves examining your competitors’ sites so we started at Google; punched in one or two of our target key phrases and then we took a look at the top 10 results.
As expected there are some very attractive, professional and engaging sites in the leading pack of web design companies, most of which offer SEO as one of their key services. Not expected is that at least three of the top 10 appear to be using somewhat shady tactics (let’s say a very dark shade of grey) to enhance their rankings…
In SEO parlance, this kind of practice is referred to as black-hat SEO - with white-hat, at the other end of the scale, referring to the ethical methods adopted by the vast majority of search engine optimization professionals.
So who are these black-hatters and what are they doing?
Well we’d never name them, of course. They know who they are and they know their homepages contain intentionally hidden elements stuffed with keywords - blocks of text inserted solely for the purpose of being picked up by search engines.
Website #1
It’s perfectly reasonable to have a heading at the very top of your page like this (and notice the use of <h1> and <strong> tags which are important in SEO):
<h1 id="title"> Welcome to XXXX Web Design Perth, Australia. XXXX provides services in <strong>Web Design</strong> and Website Development, Graphic Design, <strong> Search Engine Optimisation</strong> (SEO) in Australia and the World.</h1>
So why make it invisible?
#title {
display: none;
}
Of course have a logo high up - with relevant keywords in the <alt> text:
<div id="header"> <img src="images/XXXX.jpg" width="400" height="65" alt="XXXX - Web Design Perth (SEO Perth)" /> </div>
But why hide it?
#header {
display: none;
}
Most web pages have a few links at bottom. Fair enough - and relevant in SEO (again notice the use of <h3> and <strong> tags:
<h3 class="bottomlinks">Our <a href="web-design- perth.*****"><strong>Web Design</strong></a> Services Include: Internet - Intranet - Java, CSS, Standards Based Design, ASP, PHP, HTML and <strong>Flash Design</strong></h3>
But what’s the point if the link/text is concealed?
.bottomlinks {
display: none;
}
Website #2
A bit more obvious what’s going on here. A couple of weighty blocks of text tagged as headlines tucked into the source code. As you can see visibility is set to hidden. And just to be doubly-sure (perhaps artistic) the font colour specified so perfectly matches the background colour of the page as to render it invisible (…to all but search engines, of course).
<h1 style="visibility:hidden"><font color="#3F6681"> Website Designers & Web Developers Perth WA, Websites, Multimedia, Flash HTML web site Western Australia, graphic design company javascript business scripts internet Perth WA artwork database development desktop publishing html dhtml cd software website hosting< /font></h1>
<h2 style="visibility:hidden"><font color="#3F6681"> <strong>XXXX </strong>provides a highly technical, full service website Internet production business, offering a wide range of services, from website production, hosting, database construction and consultancy, to site re-engineering, electronic commerce and software development and sales.<br><br>Founded in ...., the business has enjoyed strong growth due to quality products and customer service satisfaction. A team of skilled web technicians and website consultants, ranging from website graphic designers to database developers provide a thorough and efficient service for any website project.</font></h2>
Website #3
My personal favourite (!) because this web agency has even gone to the trouble of creating a special style to conceal a keyword-rich headline at the very top of their homepage.
And what’s the name of their cleverly-created style? “hide” of course. Makes sense.
<div class="hide"><h1>XXXX Web Design, Perth Western Australia - providers of Website Design and Development, Website Hosting and Search Engine Optimisation to clients in Perth and throughout the world.</h1>....</div>
And the code that makes the headline invisible:
.hide {
display: none;
}
In truth, the fact that these companies appear so prominently in Google search results isn’t solely because of their, some might say, dodgy tactics. There are many other SEO factors at play.
But it would be interesting to see what would happen if they swapped hats and either dispensed with these intentionally hidden elements or made them visible.
I doubt they’ll do the latter - it would ruin the visual appearance of their homepages and make their SEO artistry (or lack of it) rather obvious (bearing in mind that they all promote SEO as an expertise).
As for the former, time will tell. They may eventually get penalized by search engines and if they already have been, simply removing their hidden content might result in even higher rankings (and a more level playing field for the rest us).
Where’s my hat? You know, the white one I always wear?
The purpose of this article, more than anything else, is to demonstrate the most common SEO pitfalls many website owners fall into. If website developers are doing it for themselves, and possibly for their clients, then that may go some way to explaining why your competitors rank higher than you in search results. Upshot: If you can’t beat them. Don’t join them. Put on your white hat and keep trying.
Want to learn more about white-hat SEO? Google’s own best-practices guide is a good place to start.
Filed Under Hints & Tips, Search Engine Optimization, Website Design
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[...] See the original post here: Top 10 web design firms use black-hat SEO [...]
I suppose I’m pleased that some of the web firms here in town even know how to use Blackhat tactics, as some are so woefully low on SEO knowledge.
I’m even more pleased that you sniffed ‘em out though. While I don’t know exactly which ones you’re talking about, I can guess, and I recommend you turn them in to Google. May not seem like it makes a difference, or maybe you just don’t like to dob, but I do it when I see what is clearly Blackhat SEO. I think everybody should and make this here intraweb a better place.
Good on ya for maintaining some integrity and encouraging best practices! Good luck mate and keep up the good work.
[...] Read the original: Top 10 web design firms use black-hat SEO [...]
Interestingly enough, only yesterday we came across a UK web design company ranking in the top 15 (UK) for “search engine optimisation london” by hiding links deep inside templates they’ve made and distributed.
and alongside their own links are also links to their client sites, who also rank very well because of them.
there must be 30 or 40 decent sites worldwide with these links hidden in them, - their innocent owners all with no knowledge at all that they are themselves involved in blackhattery and helping someone the other side of the world rank unfairly for their favoured terms.
theres still a lot of it about for sure.
Awesome article!
nice article.. Yeah I have an idea who you are talking about..
Not that bad to have style - hide, just like a class clear. Handly to kill bits visually (not the black hat SEO)
Thanks Henrik,
I’ve not actually had the time to check these sites out yet… but it seems to me these tactics are being used by web design firms who are suddenly becoming aware that SEO is actually important… and figure that they might as well jump on the bandwagon and offer it as a “service”. Typically Web design agencies are bad at SEO - although they tend to be better than traditional marketing agencies who are also now starting to promote themselves as “SEO Experts”.
I think your post highlights the benefits of looking for a specialist SEO firm - who do (for the most part) actually know what they are doing.
For these so called SEOs to use of 5 year old black-hat techniques on their OWN websites - which are very likely to result in delisting by Google - is simply a warning that they really have very little idea about SEO.
I’m very happy that your are being part of SEO Professional now a days. Just go on to the path as SEO Prof…
Story on DesignBump.com…
Your story was featured in Design Bump! Here is the link to vote it up and promote it: http://designbump.com/OffbeatOther/Top_web_design_firms_caught_using_black_hat_seo...
To be honest I was more appalled at the use of a font tag in example 2. They should be lined up and shot for that one.
I had a bit more of a think about this and i would have thought it would be easy to tweak the algorithm to recognise the hidden tag and ignore that section, as it does it javascript tags… i think long title tags just annoy people just as much as adwords links dumping you in a section that is not relevant to your keyword phrase…
blackhat has gotta be easy enough to fix, but the question is does the industry need it?
Excellent article. Great read!
Thanks,
John
Hi,
nice article thanks for sharing My Point of view black hat techniques is not good always use white hat techniques it take some time but it gives stable result.
—-Beware of Black Hat SEO Companies—-
Name and Shame I say! If we don’t shame these companies into playing fair then they will carry out their pathetic techniques on their clients websites and soon the web will be full of crap page one results. Google’s algorithm is designed to provide the best results. Not the best at spamming - as it seems here. If you don’t want to name, I hope you have reported via your Webmaster tools so the algorithm can be tightened as mentioned by Judd.
Great observation there. It is quite obvious what so many webmasters are doing without getting penalized but you never know when the time comes. It is always better to be on the white side.
I had a look around a bunch of Perth SEO company websites about a year ago, and I have to say your findings don’t surprise me from what I remember.
I’m surprised no one else has picked up on this, considering I am assuming web professionals are reading this well written post.
None of these firms are particularly hidden, you can search for the code that’s been posted on google and find the company in question.
I’m not going to post them out of respect for the authors wishes, but I’m just sayin’ not too hard to find out who it is
Thanks for this article. Now I know what to avoid when developing a site.
I found website #1 you were talking about but no hidden tags? It might of been better to do a screen shot of the code and embed it into the post - obviously removing any names etc… never the less, good article.
Ignore previous comment - found it in the CSS - doh!
And I thought my competition was bad, hah! Hopefully Google will catch them and perhaps even delist them
A good informative article to know about black hat seo. Thanks for sharing this info post.