Black Hat SEO is used to achieve a high rank in search results. This is against search engine guidelines and leads your site to the penalty.
Black Hat SEO can give instant results, but over time, it also has the opposite effect, your ranking may be decrease and your site may be completely blacklisted with search results.
Black hat SEO techniques can damage your ranking rather than improving your ranking.
This article will tell you about 18 black hat SEO techniques that you need to avoid.
So let’s get started…
Black Hat Techniques in SEO
As I said already, Black Hat SEO is against search engine guidelines and get a high ranking. But your site can be completely removed from search results over time.
Below are mentioned Black Hat techniques that can harm your Google Ranking.
1. Keyword Stuffing
Filling your content with keywords is called keyword stuffing. This creates a bad experience for users.
Here’s an example of keyword stuffing:
Are you looking for cheap android phones? If you’re looking for cheap android phones, look no further. Our cheap android phones website is the best place to order your new cheap android phones. Feel free to check out our selection of cheap android phones from our cheap android phones selection below.
In the old days, this technique was effective and used to get a higher rank in search results. But now, Keyword stuffing refers to Black Hat Techniques. Google will penalize your site.
Create rich content and place keywords appropriately. Keep keyword density 1.5% – 2% in your content. Also, use synonyms (various words with the same meaning).
Rather than filling your content with irrelevant keywords, focus on creating useful content. Because Google is much smarter than you.
2. Cloaking
Cloaking is a technique in which the content shown to the user is different from the content showing the search engine crawler. Spam websites often use cloaking to avoid search engine bots.
If Google finds that the site is cloaking, Google can permanently ban the site. Because it violates Google’s Guidelines.
Here’s what Matt Cutts has to say:
If you want to know how Google sees your website, then you can use Google’s URL Inspection tool and compare this what users see.
3. Sneaky Redirects
Redirect is used to send visitors from one page to another. This is especially used when a page is moved or changed on a site, or when the site is completely moved to a new domain.
But unfortunately, this technique is also used in black hat SEO. It’s like cloaking search engines see one thing and visitors sees another.
Sneaky redirects should be avoided. They violate the Google Search Engine Guidelines.
4. Paid Links
Search engine (Google) does not like sites that buy and sell links.
Google says,
Any links intended to manipulate PageRank or a site’s ranking in Google search results may be considered part of a link scheme and a violation of Google’s Webmaster Guidelines.
The following are examples of link schemes which can negatively impact a site’s ranking in search results:
- Buying or selling links that pass PageRank. This includes exchanging money for links, or posts that contain links; exchanging goods or services for links; or sending someone a “free” product in exchange for them writing about it and including a link
- Excessive link exchanges (“Link to me and I’ll link to you”) or partner pages exclusively for the sake of cross-linking
- Large-scale article marketing or guest posting campaigns with keyword-rich anchor text links
- Using automated programs or services to create links to your site
- Requiring a link as part of a Terms of Service, contract, or similar arrangement without allowing a third-party content owner the choice of using nofollow or other method of blocking PageRank, should they wish.
Here are a few common examples of unnatural links that may violate our guidelines:
- Text advertisements that pass PageRank
- Advertorials or native advertising where payment is received for articles that include links that pass PageRank
- Links with optimized anchor text in articles or press releases distributed on other sites. For example:
There are many wedding rings on the market. If you want to have a wedding, you will have to pick the best ring. You will also need to buy flowers and a wedding dress. - Low-quality directory or bookmark site links
- Keyword-rich, hidden or low-quality links embedded in widgets that are distributed across various sites, for example:
Visitors to this page: 1,472
car insurance - Widely distributed links in the footers or templates of various sites
- Forum comments with optimized links in the post or signature, for example:
Thanks, that’s great info!
– Paul
paul’s pizza san diego pizza best pizza san diego
5. Spam Comment
Comments also help to create backlinks. Many bloggers or website owners use it as spammy ways (one of which Automated comment) so that they can create backlinks. Currently, it is one of the most popular black hat practices.
You may have seen spam comment. These are automated comments that often contain keywords and spammy links.
That’s why most blogs now use the nofollow tag for comment links. And Google does not follow comment links and does not pass link juice.
If you are using any wrong way to get backlinks from the comment, you are using black hat SEO. I highly recommend avoiding the practice.
Furthermore, if anyone submits spam comments on your site, then delete them. There are various plugins available to automatically filter spam comments. Here I have listed some of the best antispam plugins for WordPress that you can use.
6. Duplicate Content
There are many new bloggers who copy and paste the content of another popular blog. And they think they will also become a blogging star like them. But they are absolutely wrong – this strategy belongs to the black hat SEO.
“Copy and paste” content exactly match each other or look very much similar. As a result, this kind of content does not rank in SERPs. Search engines like Google prefer unique content.
7. Article Spinning
Article spinning is the process of re-writing an article to create new copies.
This is similar to copying content. Many users consider themselves smart and spin the content of the popular blog using a third-party tool or website.
You can see an example of article spinning in the screenshot.
Negative effects of Article Spinning:
- It produces low-quality content and sometimes unreadable.
- Create a bad experience on readers.
- Make you unprofessional.
- This type of article does not hold a viewer’s attention very long.
9. Invisible Text & Link
Invisible texts mean placing white text. These texts are not visible to visitors but the search engine crawler can easily view and index them.
Some years ago, using this technique was very easy to rank in search engines. But now the search engine has become much smarter than before. And this technique refers to the black hat SEO strategy.
This is most commonly used by hackers to hide links. Also, many newbie bloggers add a list of invisible keywords in their articles to get a better rank in SERPs.
10. Over Optimizing Alt Tag
Images make your articles more engaging and attractive. But most importantly, use proper alt descriptions to your images.
Search engines like Google can not read the image, with the help of alt tag, understands the image – what it is about. If you add a lot of keywords to it, then it will be called over-optimized and refers to the black hat technique.
11. Link Farms
“Old McSpammer had a farm, e-i-e-i-oh,
And on that farm he built some links, e-i-e-i-oh
With a backlink here, and a backlink there,
Here a link, there a link,
Everywhere a link, link…”
Link farms is a website or a collection of websites that connect each other. It increasing the number of inbound links and help to boost your rankings. Search engines (Google) ranks websites by using the number of links and other factors. But link farms have a negative impact because Google considers it as a spammy way.
The use of link farms was very popular in those days when Google Page Rank mattered, but the time changed, Google also changed, and now this practice leads your site to penalty.
Search engines (Google) can easily detect link farms, so you should avoid using them.
12. Mirror Sites
Mirror sites are usually duplicate versions of the main website. It is used to increase traffic and website ranking.
Google can easily detect duplicate content and penalize. Every search engine prefers original content instead of duplicate or mirror site.
13. Doorway pages
Doorway pages are low-quality pages optimized to rank well for specific keywords. They offer little value to visitors.
This type of pages is specially designed for search engines, not for human.
Google explains about it,
Doorways are sites or pages created to rank highly for specific search queries. They are bad for users because they can lead to multiple similar pages in user search results, where each result ends up taking the user to essentially the same destination. They can also lead users to intermediate pages that are not as useful as the final destination.
Here are some examples of doorways:
- Having multiple domain names or pages targeted at specific regions or cities that funnel users to one page
- Pages generated to funnel visitors into the actual usable or relevant portion of your site(s)
- Substantially similar pages that are closer to search results than a clearly defined, browseable hierarchy
14. Link Exchange
Link exchange is a quick and easy way to drive traffic and improve ranking. This gives traffic from other sites, also readers, and more page views.
Link Exchange works on a short-term basis! But there are serious risks too. If you add bad links and unrelated links, it also affects your ranking.
15. Social Network Spam
Sending a large list of irrelevant links in the social network is considered as spamming.
Spam in Social Networks occurs when links are shared in irrelevant groups/pages/people or private messages sent to all kinds of people/pages one time or several times.
16. Paid Traffic
When you buy traffic from unknown websites, you’ll see that the bounce rate of your blog has increased, which means that peoples only visit your homepage and leave your blog.
If your site’s bounce rate increases, then it’s not good for SEO. Furthermore, when you buy traffic for your Adsense enabled blog, your AdSense account will ban.
17. Poor Content with Keyword Rich
This is also one of the black hat techniques, which results in your website deindexing in Google search engine.
If you publish poor contents on your blog but fill them with keywords, then you can lose credibility and ranking. In addition, Google does not give priority to such content.
So, only publish quality and informative content on your site.
18. Content Scraping
Scrapping content is stealing content from other publishers.
Using RSS feed to republish the content on your site is called content scraping. Google does not like this kind of blog and even penalizes them. Because it is against Google Guidelines.
Wrapping It Up
There is no doubt that Black Hat SEO is risky and can be penalized by Google. It directly violates search engine guidelines.
Black hat SEO is used by those who are looking for a quick result. But over time it has the opposite effect, you may have to face a decrease in ranking and you can be completely blacklisted from the search results.
Always use white hat SEO strategy. This is better for search engine optimization. If you want to run your online business in the long term, never do black hat SEO.
And the most important thing, stay up to date on webmaster guidelines so you can avoid black hat SEO techniques. Here are the webmaster guidelines for Google, Yahoo and Yandex.
We’re done, and it’s now your turn! Find this article helpful? Don’t forget to share!
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