SubmitEdge (which bills itself as "an ethical Search Engine Optimization firm") had an interesting article earlier this month on "What Happens to BlackkHatters."

Some definitions:

• Search engine optimization (SEO) - the process of improving the volume and quality of traffic to a web site from search engines via "natural" ("organic" or "algorithmic") search results. (according to Wikipedia).
  
  


• BlackHatter - "Blackhatter is the self descriptive term for webmasters who use "black hat SEO" techniques such as cloaking, spamdexing, scraping, or automated site generation techniques to influence search engine results. ... White Hat SEO practitioners use the term "Blackhatter" disparagingly; they claim that Blackhatters use unfair and unethical methods to get the best search engine results positions."
  
  


• Cloaking - The practice of delivering different content to the search engine spiders than that seen by human visitors to a website.
  
  


• Spamdexing (of Keyword Stuffing) - misuse of the keyword's function in SEO.

The SubmitEdge article caught my eye because it clear, concise description of some of the most unethical practices in SEO work. It looks at keyword stuffing, using white text on a white background to influence search engines without annoying human users, buying links, spamming, and cloaking.

Worst case scenarios for black hatters include being dropped from indexes altogether, never being able to get re-indexed, spending hours and hours trying to track down your own wrongdoing and undo it, losing the trust of your customers as well as other webmatsers, getting banned from participating in large portions of the web, etc.

You can read the SubmitEdge here.

I also thought that Parable Of The White Hat & The Black Hat was interesting (though it's a little long...)


Photo courtesy of iStockphoto, Image# 8394209