Blackhat SEO and "Lie to Me"

lie_to_meYou may have heard of a new T.V. show called “Lie to Me” that has recently started airing on FOX. I have watched several episodes of the show and I really enjoy it. If you have not had a chance to watch this show here, is a quick overview of what it is about. “Lie to Me” involves several specialists who are experts at detecting if someone is lying or not. These investigators are called in to investigate all types of situations where people are suspected of lying to cover something up. “Lie to Me” stars well known actor, Tim Roth.

The reason I mention this show in my blog post is to compare this show to Blackhat SEO. Like in the show “Lie to Me”, Blackhat SEO is a way that webmasters or search marketers try to deceive or lie to the search engines. But like in “Lie to Me”, search engine algorithms have learned how to detect lying or spamming websites. The algorithms are constantly being updated to look for new patterns or signs that a website is a spam site and then remove the spam site from the search results. They are so good at detecting spam now that many current blackhat techniques are not only going to get sites banned from the search engines but it is moving towards to outright illegal – Matt Cutts, PubCon 2008.

Like in the show “Lie to Me”, the lying website or spam website is going to get caught. So it is better to not try to deceive the search engines with blackhat techniques. Use legitimate optimization and internet marketing techniques that are approved by the search engines and avoid the inevitable consequences that come from trying to manipulate search rankings through blackhat SEO.

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About Dustin Williams

Dustin is a Utah SEO specialist who has been actively involved with web design and website promotion since 2001. In 2004 he was hired full-time to promote and optimize a website of an Internet based retail company. In the summer of 2007, he joined the experienced team of SEO specialists at SEO.com. He has spent much time studying search engine optimization in various web master forums, blogs and other resources on the web. He enjoys seeing the results of applying his knowledge to market websites and has seen much success from his efforts.

Leave a Comment

  1. Great article! I love when a see good SEO advice like this tied into mainstream pop culture. And you’re absolutely right. If you try to posture your site for search engines and neglect the user experience, they will know and probably bounce you from the rankings.

  2. I have never seen the show personally, but based on your comments I can see the parallels.

  3. The people that make good money using those techniques are highly skilled programmers who manage to move on. They have many domains, servers, IPs and in order to really be successful, you have to know what you`re doing. If you own a legitimate business online, I do NOT recommend taking your chances and engaging in anything blackhat.
    There are many legal and ethical ways to get your website ranked. Branding and building a reputation go long ways and enable you to sleep better after a hard day`s work knowing that your efforts will pay off and you are not likely going to wake up to a surprise which may force you to have to start all over again.

    Mike Dammann

  4. Great post and analogy between Black Hat SEO and “Lie to Me”…

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SEO.com has helped our company increase site traffic and significantly improve keyword rankings. We've enjoyed working with their team and have loved the positive results.
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