SEO: Many Australian websites practicisng black hat

Now I’m not going to name names, but lately I’ve observed that many Australian targeted websites are still using black hat SEO techniques to achieve higher search engine rankings.

Sure there is always the usual amount of spam/splog based websites, but what is most disturbing is that sites which appear to be completely “white hat” are actually using black hat techniques.

First and foremost, these sites are not really using black hat techniques when it comes to on page search engine optimisation. Rather, their skull-duggery comes from their linking practices.

Without going into too much detail, many Australian “optimised” websites are still relying on the good old “hidden counter link”.

What is this sort of link? Basically, a website provides a free “hit counter” to webmasters from all over the world. They place this “counter” on their site, so that they can get a method of visually tracking just how many visitors they have had to their website. Sounds innocent enough, eh? Well, it would be, except that in many cases this hit tracking code also contains a somewhat invisible link back to another website.

In this case, the hidden links are pointing back to other websites, completely unrelated to the host website, and certainly not visible to the end user. It’s a pretty crass technique, but somehow it seems to still be continuing today, and is being utilised by a number of promintent Australian websites.

Everyone remembers the Found Agency debacle, where they got a stiff penalty from Goolge for using such techniques. Yet today, almost over a year later, a lot of Australian targeted websites seem to be employing the same technique. No doubt they are not directly responsible for these “hidden” links to their websites, rather they are paying for this service to some 3rd party.

It’s unfortunate in that not only are these websites violating some of the most basic principles of ethical SEO (search engine optimisation), but also that they are taking advantage of webmasters who may not actually be aware that they are hosting such links.