It’s that time again; each week we pick a term related to search marketing and attempt to explain it; in simple English! No ‘mumbo-jumbo’ and no long words; just a straightforward explanation!

So without further ado, lets pick a word. This week, I’m going with…

‘Cloak’

If you are reasonably new to search and therefore already familiar withe the phrase ‘black hat’, on hearing the term ‘cloak’ you might now be convinced that search marketers are more concerned with dressing up like Dracula than marketing websites!!

It’s therefore rather apt that ‘cloak’ is a term most commonly associated with the dark side of search and therefore the black hatters of this world. ‘ Cloaking’ involves delivering different content to the search engine than the content that is visible to the human visitor. Why would you want to do this? Well, cloaking is designed to deceive search engines so that they display a page of content that would not otherwise be displayed. Although there is the odd instance where cloaking is legitimate, it is more commonly used by black hatters to game or manipulate the search engine results.

So, if over the course of the weekend you come across a man dressed from head to toe in black, complete with cloak and hat, tread carefully!! If you’re not careful, he’ll have your website blacklisted from the search engines quicker than the swoosh of his cloak!!