Introduction to Blackhat SEO

Blackhat SEOExploiting Social Media for Traffic

Maxim Ogienko

BUS 456

What is it?

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the process of increasing a website’s popularity in search engines.

Black-hat SEO is a set of techniques for unethically, but not necessarily illegally, driving traffic to a site.

Why use it?

“Search Engine Optimization = ”

Time-Consuming

Expensive

Ineffective

Slow

Non-Scaleable

Difficult

Boring

Cheap

Scaleable

Automated

Targeted

Quick

Why not use it?

Annoying

Unethical

Short-Living

Suspicious

How does it work?

Trick search engines

Get links (from big, reputable sites)

Cover page in keywords

Spam social media sites

Who uses it?

Affiliate marketers

Spammers

Fraudsters

Big companies

How to use it?

Link Farms

Create thousands of pages containing

meaningless links, all leading to one place

Social Bookmarking

Use fake accounts at social bookmarking

sites to submit the target site multiple times.

Account Buying

Purchasing hacked accounts at social

media sites to broadcast the target site’s

message and post links.

PVA Accounts

Many sites now require a valid phone

number to register. A phone-verified

account (PVA) has a valid phone number

on file. These are much harder to fake.

Who is affected?

How to fight it?

Improving search engines

Moderation

Making links NOFOLLOW

CAPTCHAs

Crowdsourcing cleanup