Airport Parking Competition Provokes Use of Black Hat Techniques

I’ve recently begun a project in which I am assessing the various online airport car parking comparison sites. This is an extremely competitive market sector with numerous sites all jostling for a top position in the Google SERPs.

So far my investigations have uncovered a whole range of techniques being employed by the various firms vying for a top search position. I’ve found that some airport parking vendors are making extensive use of blog networks, aggregating airport and air transport related news stories into their blog which also hosts a number of links to their additional airport services.

I’ve also found some extensive use of comment spam in which the commenter’s signature has been used to provide backlinks to the site being promoted. I’ve also found some instances of keyword stuffing and hidden, invisible text, which I thought had all but died out. I’ve even come across some examples of apparent cloaking which, thus far, doesn’t appear to have harmed the site that appears to be responsible.

The white hat search engine optimiser really has their work cut out for them when working in such a competitive sector. It’s no wonder that many resort to black hat techniques.