Black Hat techniques in SEO are those used to try to trick search engines into giving the target website a favorable ranking.  Common techniques include, for example: creating hundreds or thousands of worthless backlinks to one’s site, “stuffing” the site with the same keyword a ridiculous number of times, or duplicating one’s entire site and posting it on multiple domains (Web addresses/URLs) in the hopes of garnering more traffic.

Should you engage in Black Hat techniques? No! These techniques are not really unethical, per se, since they don’t hurt anyone – at least not directly. However, the argument can be made that they hurt the social and economic value of the Internet – since engaging in Black Hat techniques could potentially degrade the quality of the search results for users of search sites like Google or MSN.

The most important reasons to not engage in Black Hat techniques are that, by engaging in them you risk:

1. degrading user experience for visitors to your website

2. being flagged by top search engines, who can (if they catch you) ban your site from ever achieving strong search rankings

Bottom line: good SEO consists of featuring excellent (and fresh!) content, delivering a top-notch user experience, and generating lots of quality backlinks to your site. If you do these things and do them well, you can avoid engaging in Black Hat techniques. You will sleep better at night knowing your site is not going to be banned from Yahoo! or Google. And, your site will rank well for your target keywords – which will make you and everyone in your organization very happy campers.