There are many nefarious search engine optimisation techniques. These, commonly referred to as black hat SEO, are techniques that break SEO rules and regulations. No doubt black hat SEO has a quick and positive impact on search rankings (sometimes propelling websites to the top of the search engines' results page (SERP) in a matter of days), there are risks involved when using these strategies. If caught, a black hat trick can result in your site being handed out a penalty by the search engine. While some black hat SEO tricks have become passé, certain tactics like cloaking are still widespread across the Internet.

To understand cloaking, one really must begin with doorway pages. A doorway page is used by black hat SEO companies to spam the search engine index. This is done by inserting results for search phrases that differ from the actual content to be shown to the visitor. A common and frustrating consequence is that searchers click on a result that seems relevant, only to land at a page that is filled with pornography or advertisements. Doorway pages can use the META refresh command, a Javascript or server side redirection as well as scripting languages like Perl or PHP.

Cloaking is one form of doorway pages, in which the search engine crawlers see a different page from what will be shown to the human visitors. Here are the four steps involved in cloaking

• Websites prepare two sets of content, one targeted for crawlers or bots and the other for humans. Crawlers are identified by their IP address.


• Crawlers generally have IP addresses which change regularly and so black hat SEO must frequently update the IP list.


• To boost rankings, crawlers are served with content that is abundantly packed with targeted keywords.


• Humans however are directed to spam filled pages that generate ad revenue for the host. They will not find the best information even at the top of the SERP.

Cloaking is an unethical practice and will certainly result in a penalty for websites employing it. Providing a good user experience should be one of the aims of an SEO campaign. Black hat SEO can cause a myriad of problems which in turn will affect your website's reputation and revenue. Cloaking is nothing more than a short term solution to a larger problem and should be avoided as far as possible.