The Guardian tries Blackhat SEO

It seems that search engine optimisation has well and truly hit the public consciousness. Over the past few weeks there have been numerous big articles written by major media organisation about the impact of “black hat” SEO practices.

Anyway, yesterday the UK’s Guardian newspaper wrote an article about “black hat” SEO industry practices. For the story, the newspaper’s journalist and web developers created a spoof site and attempted to rise it through the rankings. And they achieved the desired result too (albeit for a highly uncompetitive keyword “eco-friendly flip-flops”).

Considering these articles are for the most part about three to five years behind the curve-ball on the emergence of the SEO “industry”, I wouldn’t exactly call it breaking news - but I found the articles are interesting nonetheless. Why? It’s the moment that our fringe industry hits the mainstream. Cheers for the article, Bojo.