Even though I'm not a big believer in employing blackhat techniques to improve rankings in organic listing, I wonder if there is a chance to finding some that actually help you in a significant manner.

The thing is that many marketers are so afraid of loosing something that they don't own - rankings in the SERPs - that they don't even consider taking one single risky step towards online profits.

1. Link exchange - not effective long term unless backed by a serious linking campaigns.

Google has no difficulty in discovering reciprocal links. When this happens, they generally exclude them from its index.

Still this isn't an absolute law. As a matter of fact it greatly depends on the quality of your linking partners.

When businesses are legit, link exchanges have no alternative but just to further enhance the website's reputation and position in the search engines.

If your linking portfolio abounds with low quality links and shady reciprocal links search engines will most surely demote your authority and relevancy. Even though you may witness rapid bursts in rankings, these are short lived without powerful, well established backlink sources.

Time is better spent creating and packaging valuable content that people are willing to link to it.

2. Page Onload Redirects - brings results short term but can severely damage your online business once discovered.

The penalty for practicing this technique is exclusion from SE's index. Search engines refined their methods of detecting JavaScripts redirect.

If you want to move a site or individual pages, use 301 redirect to preserve the PageRank and pass it to the new location.

The only two requirements are: the domain name to be active and the destination page to have the same theme.

3. Investing your money in links - effective with untapped link sources and good disguising.

One of the reasons why this tactic is highly disputed in the SEO community is due to the fact it actually produces results.

But as with all good things this one also has a shortcoming - don't let search engines, especially Google point them out.

The best places to plant these bough links are right in the middle of a good solid piece of article.

SEO efficient back links have two characteristics in common, and these are: 1) can't be uncovered by search engine spiders or exposed by human inspectors and 2) they're hard to replicate by competitive websites.

Building links this way also holds acquisitions at their current pricing as there are no hungry marketers fighting for a link and competing in high bids.

4. Self Built Linking Networks - with no sufficient contextual reasons can cause a penalty.

Linking networks resemble the link reciprocation method in terms of ease with which are discovered and that they're even more transparent if there are no sufficient inbound links to bury the excessive interlinking.

Many Search Engines are devaluating links coming from the same C block IP range. You can counteract this by utilizing different hosts for your various sites and again, having large amounts of inbound links referencing your network.

If you don't even have sufficient content to pour into each website you should abandon the idea of starting a linking network altogether.

5. Hidden Text - better to invest time in keyword optimization with legit methods.

There are other more effective means of influencing rankings than this and it's not worth the risk. Is not easy for the search engines to spot such deceptive methods but believe me, smart competitors will make the necessary suggestions.

6. Cloaking - efficient until it's discovered but the webpages need link equity to be indexed.

Namely, preparing two versions of the same content. One for the search engine spider and one for the human surfer.

Knowing what you do and using competent software like Fantomaster, this method isn't that easily detectable. The problem though, is that while the web evolves your website remains the same.

7. Automated Content Generation - doesn't trigger any penalties but doesn't serve you a great deal either.

Google took it's dupe content filter to a whole new level, so it has become virtually impossible for websites with replicated content to rank properly in the organic listing.

Out of all this cloud of banned SEO practices, I suggest to stick with link acquisitions and learn to be your own link broker.

Further more, instead of making expensive purchases with Yahoo Directory and other paid directories you should place your money on under priced but quality links researched by you personally.