Within the SEO community, some optimization tactics are considered Black Hat SEO. These are tactics which are not considered to be good or fair by search engine operators, search engine optimizers, or web site visitors.

There is no generally accepted definition for black hat SEO. What may be considered appropriate by one webmaster may not be considered appropriate by another webmaster. In addition to personal differences, guidelines for appropriate conduct vary across web site categories. What might be considered acceptable for a web site in the gambling industry may not be equally acceptable for a health care web site.

Here are several guidelines for determining if a technique should be considered Black Hat SEO.

Search Engine Operator Policies

Many search engine operators, such as Google, MSN, and Yahoo, publish policies and guidelines which document what they feel are appropriate and inappropriate SEO techniques.

One school of thought believes that if you stay within these guidelines, you are not practicing black hat SEO.

One difficulty with this model is that the search engine operator guidelines tend to be extremely vague and non-technical. Another difficulty is that the guidelines differ between search engines. For example, Google prefers 301 redirects, while Yahoo prefers doorway pages which inform the user of the new URL.

The Property Rights Approach

The property rights approach to the question of black hat SEO believes that anything you do with your own property is acceptable, but that you should leave other peoples property alone.

By this standard, most on-page SEO techniques are acceptable, but off-page SEO techniques like guestbook spamming should be considered black hat SEO.

This is probably the most reasonable and fair guideline for determining acceptable SEO practices, but it does have some limitations. It does not, for example, address keyword spamming or cloaking.

The Visitor Value Approach

This school of thought believes that SEO techniques which do not add value to the visitors experience belong to the school of black hat SEO.

This approach labels on-page techniques such as hidden text, micro-text, and ALT text spamming as black hat SEO.

The visitor value approach has benefits not only in defining black hat SEO, but also in promoting general practices for good web site design. Black hat SEO practices which violate this guideline may result in a boost to your SERPs, but they will not lead to return visitors or natural incoming links.

The Unnatural Rankings Approach

This school of thought believes that anything which causes a web page to rank unnaturally highly for its keywords is black hat SEO.

Unfortunately, there is no generally accepted definition for “unnaturally highly”!

If followed to its logical conclusion, this school of though considers all SEO to be black hat SEO.

Under this approach, even the use of proper heading tags (H1, H2, H3) can be considered black hat SEO.

Every normal man must be tempted at times to spit upon his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats. – H.L. Mencken