This article might also be titled “The Day I Accidentally Wore a Black Hat.” In terms of computing, hacking, search engine optimisation and so on, a black hat refers to something illegal. A white hat refers to doing something the right way, and a grey hat refers to being in the middle somehow.
Anyway, one day I was relaxing on my lounge and I decided to do an eBay search for “search engine optimisation” or SEO (can’t remember which) and found that people were offering these services online.
One listing offered $1000 links for $19.00. It sounded like a good deal and I had money in my Paypal at the time, so before you could say “Robinson Crusoe” I had ordered 1000 links and I directed them at a specific page of my website. I also specifically requested a certain keyword to be used as the anchor text of those 1000 links.
The vendor was going to use XRumer software to give me links. I thought it was him submitting to search engines, or directories or some such thing – but apprently not… more on this in just a minute.
After a few days the vendor emailed me back to say the work was completed and sent me a list of 1000 links in an excel spreadsheet. I picked some at random and checked, and YES, they were real links.
Then a few days after that, my website suddenly started ranking higher for that keyword. In fact it jumped right up to page 4 from oblivion. Whatever my vendor “friend” did has obviously had a big effect. Immediately I wanted to order more links for this keyword and for a heap of others too. I decided to research a bit more first, and that was when I realised that using XRumer software means you are wearing a black hat.
XRumer softare was created in Russia by some clever programmers and it knows how to beat CAPTCHA and other spam prevention systems on websites. So basically the software uses tricks and techniques to spam websites. It can spam hundreds of thousands of links in a day. Obviously Google and other Search Engines don’t approve of this – and neither do the people who get the spam on their website.
As I researched more, I learned about people who had their websites dropped from the Google index because of the use of XRumer…. that was a scary thought.
Over the months that followed my ranking dropped from it’s page 4 spot. WHY. We’ll, it’s because as site owners discover the spam links they delete them and so all the links built in a few days are gradually removed and the instant position on Google is gone.
So that was the day I accidentally wore a black hat. Even if I did realise and did approve of what happened, it was of no benefit whatsoever because the links are gone. Plus, to continue with that method would be to risk earning the wrath of Google and the Others.
So my summary is this. Don’t use xRumer software or similar systems. Any blackhat method will only produce temporary success. Stick to the tried tested ways of improving your rank…. write good quality original content, and submit your site to search engines and directories.
Monday, February 7, 2011
