Black-Hat SEO Techniques To Avoid
Getting a good rank in your search engine results is an ever learning and long process. However, one should never cheat to win! Every coin has two sides similarly, SEO also contains a fair and an unfair side. If you want to know more about SEO read our blog on What is SEO.
SEO consists of White hat SEO techniques and Black-hat SEO techniques. Using unethical techniques for better ranking is done with the help of Black-Hat SEO techniques whereas White-Hat SEO techniques abide by the search engine guidelines and use an ethical approach.
What Is Black-Hat SEO?
Black-hat SEO includes tactics and techniques which violate the search engine’s terms of service. Black-hat SEO exploits the loopholes established by the search engine and use it to their benefit to increase traffic, visibility and ranking of your page.
Reasons To Avoid Black-Hat SEO
Just in case someone is using Black-Hat SEO techniques to increase the ranking there are a lot of complexities one can face!
The Google guidelines for SEO very specifically say that “Violations may lead to a website being removed entirely from the Google index or otherwise affected by an algorithm or a manual SPAM action”. The guidelines given by google also state that “A site that has been affected with SPAM action may no longer show up in the results of google.com or any of the Google‘s partner sites.” Search engine optimization strategies are all about increasing your visibility generating more traffic which can in-turn lead to increase in revenue. However, by using Black-Hat SEO and violating the terms of service one can receive the exact opposite effect of what they dream to achieve. Black-Hat SEO techniques can also lead to being wiped completely from search results or gaining a lower position. Here are two prominent reasons why a marketer shouldn’t use Black-Hat SEO techniques: –
Short-Term Results
It is needless to say that Black-Hat SEO won’t drive long-term results. Black-Hat SEO uses manipulative techniques for increasing ranking, search performances etc. With the changing guidelines and algorithm of Google. It will discover that your page is using unethical techniques and once this happens a lot of traffic will be lost. The traffic generated on your website by using Black-Hat SEO techniques is unreliable and can’t be used to detect if the page is genuinely reaching out to people or not.
Negative Impact
Short-term results having a negative impact on search rankings, visibility, and traffic goes hand-in-hand. The ranking & visibility of the website will have a negative effect if one employs unprincipled techniques.
Black-Hat SEO Techniques To Avoid
If you are just tapping your foot into the world of SEO you may get confused with a lot of SEO strategies and tactics however here are a few basic Black-Hat SEO strategies that you should avoid:
Stuffing Keywords
Stuffing keywords repeatedly on your page will not help you increase the ranking of your page. Keyword stuffing can also result in the quite opposite that is reduce the ranking of your page
Various Black-hat SEO strategies at times attempt to manipulate the ranking of the page by including unnecessary keywords anywhere possible. When a user reads your content the sentences and paragraphs won’t make any sense when keywords are stuffed anywhere this can lead to reduction in the quality of content published on your website.
Content Duplication
Posting content which is copied from other sites on your website and claiming it ‘original’ is unethical. It is known as plagiarism and Google identifies it very quickly. There are various applications that help you to check if your content has plagiarism or not.
Creating content is not easy however researching, learning and creating useful and unique content can go a long way and can help you increase the ranking of your page.
Hidden Text
Hidden texts are the text that is the same as the background color of your website and are positioned off the screen purposely like behind an image, such texts are also hidden from the users by keeping their font size as zero. These hidden texts generally consist of stuffed keywords that can help in increasing the rank of your page. This technique is not recommended and this can’t be applied as texts are loaded dynamically using JavaScript and such techniques can also lead to an increase in the load time of your page which can lead to reduction in the ranking of your page.
Manipulative Links
One of the most common types of Black-Hat SEO techniques is link schemes.
Link building is a little tough in comparison to creating valuable and user-friendly content. One should avoid tactics like paid links that do not contain sponsored attributes, excessive link exchanges, SPAM blog commenting, SPAM form or automated Link Building. Such manipulative links can reduce the trust of the user in the website which is not good for the long run.
Gateway Pages
While creating pages that target specific inquiries or search queries with content intended to act only as a funnel for one page is a violation of the Google Guidelines. Such pages are also known as gateway pages or doorway pages. Each and every piece of content created on your site serves a specific purpose and one shouldn’t create pages in an attempt to rank for keywords that are completely irrelevant.
For example,
- Pages that are created solely for ranking purposes and not to meet the needs of the users.
- Creating pages using geographically targeted keywords in the location where your business doesn’t exist and your website is a funnel to a single page.
One should avoid such techniques. Your website is creating content not for search engines but for humans and that’s how you should create and market your website which can in turn lead to an increase in ranking.
Redirects That Are Misleading
Using redirect is a common part of search engine optimization even if it’s for an older page for which you are updating a new URL or you are preparing to migrate your site. There is nothing wrong with redirecting links and it is one of the most preferred methods to make your site organized and easily accessible for users as well as search engine crawlers.
Placing sneaky redirects is one of the Black-Hat SEO techniques to deceive users as well as search engines and display content different from what the users see. Google guidelines specifically list sneaky redirects as a Black-hat tactic and it is considered as a violation of the guidelines.
Negative SEO
Black-Hat SEO techniques are not just used to increase the rank of your site. Various unethical SEO techniques use negative SEO to make an attempt to reduce the ranking of their competitors. It’s implicit that this tactic violates Google’s terms of service.
One of the most common strategies is putting a large number of unnatural links on someone else’s domain with the idea that they will be penalized for it. While this is uncommon, Google is improving day by day and has started to track the origin of such unnatural links and it is important to be aware and analyze your link profile if you are getting such negative SEO attacks.
How To Report A Black-Hat SEO
Now that you have read the adverse effects of using Black-Hat SEO. There might be a question popping in your head: if I spot someone using Black-Hat SEO techniques that isn’t penalized, how can you report that page?
With Google, you can file a spam report when you believe that a page is violating various Google guidelines just to increase their ranking. Google will take all the necessary actions against that page if the page is exploiting the loopholes.
Getting efficient rankings and visibility through SEO is an ongoing process however it is necessary that one should not resort to unethical techniques to increase the ranking and visibility of their website as the results generated from the same will not be long-lasting and can even lead to harsh effects like a ban on your website or at being penalized.
We all want to increase our site traffic visibility and ranking which can in turn lead to an increase in the revenue of our website. We at The Urban Chief can help you achieve these goals with all ethical techniques and long-lasting results.
