Like so many topics, there are countless opinions and discussions on the Internet in regards to not only getting a site indexed by search engines but how to gain a top ranking. Many methods, while they do work, are unscrupulous and are very risky as some search engines may ban sites that they detect are using such techniques. Black hat techniques, also known as the "dark side," are a risky proposition and should be avoided for any website that has a long-term objective.
Cloaking is one of the most often talked about SEO techniques. In essence, cloaking is the serving up of a page to search engine bots that has been optimized to a specific set of keywords and is totally different from the page that is served up to real people using a web browser like Microsoft Internet Explorer. Cloaking is in short a bait and switch tactic.
While there are all kinds of reasons people will use to justify the use of cloaking, it is never an acceptable technique for gaining a higher search engine placement. It is believed that if Google detects or is informed of a site that is using cloaking to trick Google search results, they will remove the offending site from their index and will exclude the site from future indexes.
Since the dawn of SEO, a favorite technique has been to pad pages with lots of hidden keywords. This can be done in various ways. The oldest method was to make it the same color as the background. The most current trick is to put the keywords within DIV tags that are then hidden using stylesheet instructions. The search engines have never looked kindly upon this rudimentary cloaking like practice and early on they developed techniques to detect when text was the same color as the background. It is believed that search engines penalize sites that employ this technique. While it may be harder for search engines to detect that text has been hidden using stylesheet instructions, using this trick is a step towards the dark side and should be avoided.
Another popular tactic is to generate scores of "doorway" pages that are optimized for specific keywords and specific search engines and then feed those specific pages to their respective search engines. Google and their competitors really don't like this and if they detect it, they will often times penalize a site for it.
FFA (free for all) sites and link farms are generally considered sites that have an automated system for blindly accepting links from anyone who submits their link. Submitting to these sites generally does no harm to one's ranking with the search engines. With that said, they are generally of no value as search engines like Google are believed to have mechanisms in place to detect these kinds of sites and ignore them in regards to calculating a site's "link popularity". These types of sites do have a downside, in that they typically require that one provides personal information like an email address when submitting a link. This personal information is then used for spamming purposes.
There are many software packages out there that will automate many parts of your search engine submission process or "help" with SEO efforts. Be fore warned that while this software may try to make it appear that they are operating with the blessing of the search engines, typically they are not. These software packages are tools and like any tool, one must understand what these programs do and how they work. They can make things deceptively easy, which can lead one into big trouble. If one is going to use software to assist them in their website promotion efforts the following things should be kept in mind:
Avoiding the dark side when trying to promote one's site requires using good judgment. If what you are doing could be interpreted as trying to cheat the system, carefully evaluate it. Your best friends in promoting your website can be Google and their competitors. Take the time to write lots of good compelling content to feed to the search engines and they will reward you. Your website can become your golden goose. Being drawn into the dark side and chasing the "Google dance" for short-term success, however, could kill it.
Page One: Chasing the "Google dance" verses the long-term perspective
