LAST EDITED ON Oct-12-07 AT 03:40 AM (PST)
 
What's black hat? What's whitehat? What's grayhat?

These are opinions that will differ from person to person.

However, for this forum we will need to define these terms and I'll be using my own definitions so that we are all on one "page"...Not that mine are right or better than your's...

Blackhat = Anything you do on someone else's site to improve your own site, that is against the other site's TOS or common manners.

Whitehat = Anything we do on our own sites. I do not believe setting up 1,000,000 doorway pages on my own site is blackhat. I am paying for my hosting. I am paying for my domains. Unlike other types of spam, I'm paying my own way.

I'm going to make understanding even the most complex blackhat strategies very simple: They exploit other people's sites for their own gain.

This is most often done in one of two ways:
1. "Borrowing" others' content.
2. Looking for exploits in other people's sites for their own gain.

There's legit ways to use others' content. One is through use of RSS pheeds. Some webmasters will cry that you're not supposed to use their pheed. However, the whole reason for RSS to exist is to "syndicate" your content.

I do believe that when using others' pheeds, you keep their info intact, don't use "nofollow" and give them a legit link back. Blackhatters will try to hide their links, or even mis-direct the links to affiliate programs.

Probably the biggest form of Blackhat SEO is for linking...As most of us know, linking is a major part of SEO.

Blackhatters look for anyway they can get access to others' sites and pages. Some blackhatters will go so far as to try to hack into your site. But we won't deal with this type of blackhatter.

Mostly, blackhatters look for opportunities YOU give them to add links to their site. Sure, they abuse these opportunities, but it's important to understand the concept.

Any way you give someone else to write something on your website, or control any part of your site is an opportunity for a blackhat link spammer.

Some of the more common ways they do this are blog comment spam and forum posting spam. As you can see, here's a case where a webmaster gives the ability to modify their site.

So let's make a quick list of potential opportunities for blackhatters:
blog comments
forum posts
guestbooks
social bookmaking sites (they allow others to modify pages)
wikis
classified ad sites
free hosting sites
blog trackback spam

Blackhatters even look for "referal spam" opportunities.

What do I mean by referal spam?

Have you ever seen a site that lists the "top sites" that send them traffic, then link to those sites? Blackhatters will easily "game" this, making the other site think they are sending them traffic, when they are not.

Another way is search the engines looking for popular web stats programs that have been indexed in the search engines. If a site's web logs/stats are in the engines, the blackhatter will again "game" the site, making it appear that it is sending them a lot of traffic.

Now, the blackhat site will appear as a "top referer" and because the other site's stats are indexed, the blackhat site gets a link.

The thing to remember is that there's a number of ways to automate finding these exploits. There's blackhat software to find just about any exploit.

We'll cover some of this software as time goes on...Some can be used for legit reasons, others are just plain evil.

I'll end this post with another of my own opinion...I have a bit of a Robin Hood mentality. I have very little problem "gaming" some of the big, million dollar sites, while feeling that the little guy should be left alone. I can't really defend this "robbing from the rich, give to the poor", so I won't.

But I will say, we'll see if we can't exploit some of the bigger sites for our own good.

Let me give you an idea of what is acceptable in this forum, and what isn't:

Acceptable - Someone has a good page that will be of interest to many. We will "game" the social bookmarking sites to give our fellow member more exposure.

Unacceptable - Stealing and posting others' property here. By this, I mean we won't be sharing software, ebooks, etc, which some other blackhat sites do.

Unacceptable - Spamming other little guys' blogs, forums, etc. WE can and will discuss how to find relelvant places to post our links that give us the most return, but not spam. By this, I mean we may find a method to find relevant blogs that don't have "nofollow" tags. but instead of spamming these resources, we will add useful comments to them.

This is actually a win-win. We're just going to make sure we get links back for our contributions.

Hi Kurt,

I just had a chance to read these tips.

excellent stuff. Some I knew of, some I should have.

In either case, I am glad to see this particular thread.

kelvin

Below are two recommended resources for SE spider lists:

www.fantomaster.com/fashadowmaker0.html
www.iplists.com

The main purpose of these lists is to use the with cloaking. For example, if your server detects a "visit" is from one of the IP addresses on the list, your cloaking script knows it is a serch engine, and therefore shows them a highly SEO'ed page.

Simply:

Real person gets one page...Either a good looking, real content page or affiliate page, etc.

Search engine is shown another page...Possible a dynamically created page, one each for a ton of keywords.

Here's some blackhat blogs for you:

http://www.seo-blackhat.com A Blackhat's Diary

http://blackhatseodiary.org Black Hat SEO Diary

http://www.blackhat-seo.com Blackhat SEO

http://www.bluehatseo.com Blue Hat SEO-Advanced SEO Tactics

http://www.lookwhatgmanfound.com Look What G-Man Found

http://www.seoblackhat.com SEO Black Hat - SEO Blog

http://www.wagerank.com WageRank

http://wordze.com Wordze the best keyword tool right now

http://www.blackhatdomainer.com Black Hat Domainer

I am glad to see this thread up too Kurt, especially after John's post in the other forum.

I think some times people get the wrong idea about Bombing simply by the name. A good explaination solves that problem.

Hey Kelvin,

Good to see you in print!

Mary

Here's a bit of a blackhat linking tip, that I feel is really whitehat.

If your host has decent logs, it will track all "referers", which are pages that link to you site and have sent you at least one person.

What you need to do is make a list of all your referers, then run a check to see which are indexed in the search engines, and which are not.

Now, take the list of the URLs that are referers that are NOT in the engines, and get them in the engines. You can do this by pinging each URL, or by making a page with links to all of them, then linking to the page with your more powerful pages.

If you have a mature site, you may have a lot of links that aren't giving you any juice because they aren't in the engines. Do what you can to get them in the engines.

Hey Kelvin and Mary...

Thanks...A lot of the blackhat stuff will be more about protection than actually using ourselves.

For example, WordPress has a popular plugin that shows "top referers". It seems like a cool idea, list the sites that send you the most traffic and give them a link back.

Problem is, this can be easily gamed using nothing more than iFrames and a meta refresh tag. Both are simple HTML and don't take any programming. Add on a proxy so each visit uses a different IP, and you have a referal spammer.

Setting up a sohpisticated, automated network that seeks out these WP blogs with the Top Referer plugin, then sending fake traffic can get blackhatters thousands and thousands of links...AND IT really isn't that hard for just an average programmer to create. Don't fall victim.

Kurt, I just got software that crawls my sites and then submits them to bookmarking sites I have joined. I have started doing 15 to 20 bookmarks a day.

I think this might be a good way to link back to sites linking in to me but not in the search engines, in a way that will get them on some of the popular pages and build their links to them. I would probably only do a few pages per site.

Am I on the right track? Any negatives to this?

Also
"or by making a page with links to all of them, then linking to the page with your more powerful pages."

I don't understand "then linking to the page with your more powerful pages." Link from a high visitor page, a high pr page? Please explain.

Thanks

Jeannie

>Here's a bit of a blackhat linking tip, that I feel is
>really whitehat.
>
>If your host has decent logs, it will track all "referers",
>which are pages that link to you site and have sent you at
>least one person.
>
>What you need to do is make a list of all your referers,
>then run a check to see which are indexed in the search
>engines, and which are not.
>
>Now, take the list of the URLs that are referers that are
>NOT in the engines, and get them in the engines. You can do
>this by pinging each URL, or by making a page with links to
>all of them, then linking to the page with your more
>powerful pages.
>
>If you have a mature site, you may have a lot of links that
>aren't giving you any juice because they aren't in the
>engines. Do what you can to get them in the engines.

Hi Jeannie,

>Kurt, I just got software that crawls my sites and then
>submits them to bookmarking sites I have joined. I have
>started doing 15 to 20 bookmarks a day.
>
>I think this might be a good way to link back to sites
>linking in to me but not in the search engines, in a way
>that will get them on some of the popular pages and build
>their links to them. I would probably only do a few pages
>per site.
>
>Am I on the right track? Any negatives to this?

Socialbot 2.0?

This should help...What you want to do is to link from a site(s) back to the bookmark site's pages that have your links.

There won't be any major negatives if this isn't your only link pattern. You don't want all of your links coming from the same sources.

>Also
>"or by making a page with links to all of them, then linking
>to the page with your more powerful pages."
>
>I don't understand "then linking to the page with your more
>powerful pages." Link from a high visitor page, a high pr
>page? Please explain.

I reread what I wrote and got a little confused myself.

The goal is simply to get the pages that have links into the engines. This is much more efficient than trying to get new links.

This can be done any number of ways...

Make a list of your referers that are NOT in the engines and put them on a page. Then link to this page from your "power pages"....By this, I mean the pages of your's that get spidered the most often and have the highest page rank.

Of course, you can also add these links directly to your "power pages", again these are pages with high PR and get indexed often.

Also, you can post these to a blog and then blog and ping.

You can even try pinging each referer page directly.

I suggest doing as much of the above as you can, with the intent of getting the engines to visit those referer pages and start counting those as links to your pages.

Thanks Kurt for the explanation. Will there be a difference if the site is an authority site or not? As you had posted, most authority sites do not have a lot of links out.

I have an authority site that is stuck at a certain level of traffic and sales. It has links, and links from non indexed pages as well, so that makes sense to help non indexed pages get indexed.

Once they are indexed, the extra linking on my site could be removed, correct It was just a temporary thing?

Jeannie

>Hi Jeannie,
>
>>Kurt, I just got software that crawls my sites and then
>>submits them to bookmarking sites I have joined. I have
>>started doing 15 to 20 bookmarks a day.
>>
>>I think this might be a good way to link back to sites
>>linking in to me but not in the search engines, in a way
>>that will get them on some of the popular pages and build
>>their links to them. I would probably only do a few pages
>>per site.
>>
>>Am I on the right track? Any negatives to this?
>
>
>Socialbot 2.0?
>
>This should help...What you want to do is to link from a
>site(s) back to the bookmark site's pages that have your
>links.
>
>There won't be any major negatives if this isn't your only
>link pattern. You don't want all of your links coming from
>the same sources.
>
>
>>Also
>>"or by making a page with links to all of them, then linking
>>to the page with your more powerful pages."
>>
>>I don't understand "then linking to the page with your more
>>powerful pages." Link from a high visitor page, a high pr
>>page? Please explain.
>
>I reread what I wrote and got a little confused myself.
>
>The goal is simply to get the pages that have links into the
>engines. This is much more efficient than trying to get new
>links.
>
>This can be done any number of ways...
>
>Make a list of your referers that are NOT in the engines and
>put them on a page. Then link to this page from your "power
>pages"....By this, I mean the pages of your's that get
>spidered the most often and have the highest page rank.
>
>Of course, you can also add these links directly to your
>"power pages", again these are pages with high PR and get
>indexed often.
>
>Also, you can post these to a blog and then blog and ping.
>
>You can even try pinging each referer page directly.
>
>I suggest doing as much of the above as you can, with the
>intent of getting the engines to visit those referer pages
>and start counting those as links to your pages.

>Thanks Kurt for the explanation. Will there be a difference
>if the site is an authority site or not? As you had posted,
>most authority sites do not have a lot of links out.

The authority can't hurt...And will probably help, at least in the speed it will take to get the other sites' links indexed.

You could link to a blog, then blog the other sites' links:

Authority site => Blog => Links

>Once they are indexed, the extra linking on my site could be
>removed, correct It was just a temporary thing?

What I would do in this case is:
Authority => links
Authority => Blog => Links

Once the links are indexed, remove them from the authority site, and leave them on the blog.

Also, you can try pinging each URL that contains your links as well.

For this, use pingoat, ping 0 matic, or my Pingz. It's a lot of work, but may be best if you dont' want to directly link to the pages.

Here's some free blackhat scripts some of you may want to try:

http://www.esrun.co.uk/blog/scripts/

From his page:

"Full Systems

XML Feed link builder - Generate huge amounts of incoming links with very little effort.

Automated website creator - This software generates a complete website based on scraping Google for keywords and Yahoo for search results.
Ezinearticles Scraper - Scrape articles from Ezinearticles and automatically generate pages.

Cloaked content generator - Scrapes content from wikipedia and cloaks to search engines.

Alexa rank cheater - Automate the false increase of your Alexa rating/rank.

DITY - A very easy to use multi guestbook spammer.

DISY - An automated tool to signup to phpBB forums, generating incoming links.

Keyword scrapers

Overture single keyword scraper - Enter one base keyword and scrape similar keywords from overture.

Google single keyword scraper - This script will take a base keyword and then scrape similar keywords from google.

Ask single keyword scraper - This script allows you to scrape a range of similar keywords to your original keyword from Ask.com.

Search engine result pages scrapers

MSN Live Search API scraper - This script uses php cURL to scrape search results from the MSN LIVE Search API.

Other stuff

Typo generator - create typos of a competitive keyword and rank easy!

cURL Multi socket example - a script to show you how to use cURL in multi socket mode

GMAIL Account Creator - Automate the signing up of GMAIL accounts."

Here's a YouTube account creator...I haven't tried it and it's $147, but want to post it here to show folks what's out there and the blackhat strategies that you're up against:

http://tubeautomator.com/