Black Hat SEO

This week in class, we talked about communication digital environments. We spent a lot of time talking about search engine optimization, or SEO. Dr. Yadav said that we weren't going to spend a whole lot of time talking about the "dark side" of this particular industry, so I decided to do some research myself. I always find unethical computing practices intriguing, because they help me understand how people think, and how to get around a problem.

I found an article called "The Dark Side of SEO." Here's the link:

http://www.business2community.com/seo/infographic-the-dark-side-of-seo-techniques-0170200

The article divides up these "black hat" techniques into 3 categories: Development spam, Content spam, and Link spam. Apparently there are a plethora of ways to unethically engage in SEO. Some of the terms that stuck out to me were: Cookie stuffing, sybil attack, scrapper sites, splogs, meta-tag stuffing, and link farms.

My company only engages in "white hat" SEO practices - or at least that's what my SEO guy tells me. But it's good to know that even in the world of developing webpages and online marketing, there is a way to be a above reproach and still extremely successful.