Black Hat SEO
Black Hat SEO is a practice you DO NOT want to use to get your rankings in Google or
Black Hat techniques do not generate any benefit for the searcher and usually result in a penalty for the website using them. Those techniques include stuffing of keywords, cloaking, private link networking and other.
It is essential for business growth to appear in search results. And there are good ways of achieving it and bad ways as well. As you have already guessed from the name – ‘Black Hat SEO’ is the
If you are new to the SEO, you must remember that Black Hat practice is going against the guidelines set up by search engines. If you are serious about your business the White Hat SEO is the only way to go. Do not risk to be wiped out completely from the search results. Nowadays if you are not appearing on Google – you do not exist.
WHAT NOT TO USE:
Cloaking
This Black Hat SEO technique is the practice of displaying the different content for
It is absolutely fine to make custom content for different groups. For example, you can adjust the size of the content when someone visits using a tablet or other mobile device. Also, it is fine to tailor the language or the ads for a certain group or audience. As long as you are not manipulating the content which appears for the search engine, you will be sweet.
Before publishing the content ask yourself a question – how does the user
Keyword Stuffing
One of the Black Hat SEO techniques is to fill up your content with irrelevant keywords and providing no value to the searcher by using different variations of them.
Google explanation of keyword stuffing:
- Lists of phone numbers without substantial added value
- Blocks of text listing cities and states a webpage is trying to rank for
- Repeating the same words or phrases so often that it sounds unnatural”
This is the example of stuffing keywords for a website which sells chest freezers:
“Our business is to sell chest freezers. We have the widest range of chest freezers. Chest freezers we sell are very good. If you want to buy any of our chest freezers, please contact our chest freezers department.”
Make sure your website does not have any content similar to the above example.
You might have heard a joke “SEO copywriter walks into a bar, grill, pub, public house, Irish, bartender, drinks, beer, wine, liquor…”. It is all about stuffing keywords. The words are very similar, but there is zero value as they do not even make a sentence or any sense.
For sure you need to make a research on the keywords, but do not overuse them. Create only relevant and high-quality content that delivers the best user experience. If you want to learn more about it, subscribe to our blog to get the latest tips in tricks in White Hat SEO.
Using dodgy redirects
When you are redirecting someone to a different URLs other than one which was initially clicked, you have to make sure they get the relevant content. Otherwise it can be considered as Black Hat SEO. It is very important to use redirect only for the purpose they were initially designed. That could be the permanent transfer of your website to the other domain or consolidation of multiple pieces of content into one.
Always make sure your redirects are justified and do not violate the search engines guidelines.
Duplicate or Low-Quality Content
After the implementation of Google Panda Update many ranking sites on the internet were instantly hit. They were using the duplicate content from other resources. Since that time Google improved a lot in recognising the low-quality and duplicate content.
The other Black Hat SEO technique is to make the page ranking for one topic and then switch to totally different subject. This will mislead the user to the content he was not searching for. As a result, it will create a very bad experience for the searcher, increase your bounce rate and end up with a penalty from the search engine.
Black Hat SEO also has such unethical tactics as making the links invisible. It happens when the content font colour matches the background. That may allow the page to appear in search results for the keywords which are invisible to the searcher. Never hide the content if you care about the user experience and your website ranking.
Buying and selling Links
In a word, buying and selling links is completely prohibited by Google and result in an instant ban. Same story with other search engines. Here is what 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. This includes any behavior that manipulates links to your site or outgoing links from your site.”
Never pay any other website for the links. It will result in penalties for both you and the seller. Do not panic if you have already paid someone. Make sure you remove the links as soon as possible. If you cannot remove the links, use a Disavow Tool. You will need to submit the bad backlinks, which will help Google to ignore them while calculating your rank.
Violating the structured data guidelines
Structured data is used to make your content stand out on the search result pages. It also known as schema. Structured data can be displayed for recipes, reviews podcast, products, etc. If you are using the Structured Data Markup to improve your ranking, then use it with caution and according to Google Recommendations. The improper implementation of structured data markup is considered a Black Hat SEO and can result in a penalty.
There is nothing to be afraid of if you are using the markup in fair and truthful way. Keep on doing a productive work in order to deliver the best experience for the user. To make sure you are doing great, use the free tool to test your structured data.
Spamming in Blog comments
Before Google updated the algorithm to disregard the links in blog comments for PageRank this practice used to be very popular in Black Hat SEO. There are still some companies who provide the services in building such links. We highly recommend never use those services as it is the spammy way to get your rankings. It is the safest to generate the good quality content and deliver amazing user experience.
If you are a blogger or having a resource where the comments are allowed, ensure that your comments are free of spam. You can use different methods to protect from it.
Link Farms
There is a type of websites designed to serve one purpose – link building. And this is not white hat. Those websites link to each other creating a waterfall of backlinks. Among other factors search engines take into account the amount of backlinks when calculating the PageRank. Black Hat SEO uses the link farms to dramatically increase the amount of backlinks for a particular website.
Modern Google algorithms easily detect link farms. And for sure uses the ban hammer to penalise both parties for using this technique. You need to use only great content and data and be consistent. This will allow you to obtain the links to your website in a natural way. It takes time, but it is valued by search engines and will pay you back with a good ranking.
PBNs
Private blog networks also known as PBNs are used only for generating the backlinks. They are something like Link Farms, but with the difference that PBNs are not linked to each other. They are only connected with the site which wants to increase its ranking.
Black Hat SEOs using PBN would usually buy the domains with the good rankings which has expired. They flood it with the content similar to what it was on that domain before and publish links to the site they want improve the ranking. Smart isn`t it?
But the search engines nowadays are smarter than any time before. Modern algorithms instantly detect PBNs and give serious penalties. If you accidentally started using PBNs you have to stop immediately and delete all the links before you get penalized.
BMW 2016 Case
Yes, even the big companies are being caught using the dark techniques. In 2006 BMW used pages stuffed with the keywords on their German website bmw.de. That practices allowed them to obtain a lot of traffic to their website.
But they got the penalty of every business nightmare – the got REMOVED FROM THE GOOGLE INDEX completely.
J.C. Penny 2010 Case
Another Fortune500 giant J.C.Penny got caught for using Black Hat SEO techniques. In 2010 with the help of Link Farms they have generated so many links that if you would look for any hot product J.C.Penny was #1 on the search result page.
There are still some shades around that story as Google noticed that they are breaking the rules only when the story made it to New York Times. Some rumors say that J.C.Penny is one of the Google`s biggest clients, who spend millions on pay-per-click ads per month. But this might be just rumors. I leave it to you to decide.
Long story short – J.C.Penny lost 70 positions in search results which dramatically affected their business. Basically they disappeared from results for 99.9% of potential customers.
If you are serious about your business – stay away from link farming.
Google in 2012 Case
This might sound awkward but in 2012 Google has taken a manual action to demote their own www.google.com/chrome page for 60 days. The reason behind that is Google messed up their sponsored campaigns and there was a link which helped to improve Chrome PageRank but has absolutely no value for the user and completely irrelevant.
Google removed the link straightaway and implemented the penalty. In this case Google was showing off that they strive to deliver the best user experience and there are no companies who can get away with using Black Hat SEO techniques.
How to avoid the Black Hat SEO in 2019?
- Put the searcher on the first place. To get a good ranking you need to make a searcher happy. The search engine will give you a good ranking as a present for your good attitude.
- Customize the content for the different groups and audiences, but never use cloaking.
- Generate only high-quality content, which the user will benefit from. Do not use the keyword stuffing, write in a natural manner. Make sure the readability is at 100%
- Follow Google instructions when you are using the rich snippets
- Do not buy links from private networks or involve your website in link farming. Search Engines are clever enough to detect the violations and penalize you severely
If you are serious about your company`s business and reputation, the White Hat SEO is the only way to go. Getting caught with the Black Hat SEO is the same as getting caught with crime in real life. You get penalized and put your business’s website into jail. And it is really hard to recover. Be fair and always follow the webmaster`s guidelines to bring your business to success. Contact Us if you need help cleaning your website from Black SEO and if you would like to grow your ranking using accurate SEO techniques.
