Search engine optimization (SEO) plays a key role in generating traffic to your site. However, using underhanded and shady methods (known as black hat SEO tactics) to boost your rankings can result in search engine penalties. Therefore, it is essential to understand which practices are considered unethical and to be avoided. In this post, we will take a closer look at black hat SEO and how it can damage your website, rankings, and reputation. We will then discuss some of the most common bad practices and show you how to avoid them.
Let’s get started!
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What is SEO Black Hat?
Black Hat SEO is a term that describes underhanded or unethical practices used to improve a website’s search engine rankings. It is the opposite of White Hat SEO, which includes techniques approved and recommended by search engines.
Google and other search engines have webmaster guidelines that site owners and web developers must follow when optimizing their content. Any deviation from these rules can result in a penalty.
There are several harmful practices that can penalize your site, regardless of whether you consciously use them or not. One of the most common Black Hat SEO tactics is keyword stuffing. Users stuff their content with the same keywords to get top spots on search engine results pages (SERPs). This practice makes content difficult to read and reduces its usefulness to readers, often to the point of gibberish..
As you probably already know, search engines such as Google use algorithms to deliver relevant content to users based on their search queries. These search algorithms are constantly updating and improving. This means that they also improve in detecting black hat SEO techniques such as keyword stuffing and other spam behaviors.
A Google penalty normally leads to a significant drop in your rankings. Alternatively, the search engine may even remove your website completely from search results. This scenario typically occurs when an algorithm update identifies bad SEO practices on your site.
Although it is possible to get back into Google’s good graces, it takes a lot of work to recover from a penalty. It is best to never get into this situation. Therefore, it is best to learn about black hat practices so you know how to avoid them altogether.
Black Hat SEO: 10 techniques to avoid
As we have just seen, using sneaky tactics to get on top of Google rankings can result in penalization. Even if you use them inadvertently, bad SEO practices can hurt your rankings and reduce the chances of users discovering your website. With that in mind, let’s take a look at the most common black hat SEO techniques and how to avoid them!
- Keyword stuffing
As mentioned earlier, keyword stuffing involves filling a page with the phrase you wish to rank for. While keywords help search engines understand what your content is about, overuse can get you into trouble.
Search engines are very good at detecting keyword stuffing and penalize offenders by not showing their content. Therefore, we advise you to use keywords moderately and naturally. We recommend using a plugin such as Yoast SEO or Rank Math to monitor keyword usage:
In addition to making suggestions for optimizing your website, Yoast also tells you if you are overdoing it with SEO. For example, it measures the density of keywords in a post. It also warns you if you have already used the same search term on another page .
- Buying backlinks
Search engines also use backlinks to rank content. If Google sees that there are many external websites with URLs to your posts and pages, it will consider you an authoritative and reliable source . This can help improve your positions in SERPs. Some users take advantage of this ranking signal by selling link placements on their sites. In this setup, other site owners may pay to have a site owner place a backlink to their content.
However, if someone sells these links to many users, search engines may mark the site as spam. In addition, buying links goes against Google’s Webmaster Instructions and you may receive a penalty for doing so.
Fortunately, there are better ways to build backlinks to your site. For example, you could write guest posts for other websites and include a relevant URL to one of your posts. You can also work with other bloggers on collaborative articles, contact you if you notice a broken link on a site to suggest your own as a replacement, and so on.
- Article spinning
Another thing to watch out for is article spinning. Similar to plagiarism, this practice involves copying posts published on other websites. Spinning means reusing the same ideas and rephrasing entire paragraphs. Some writers may even use artificial intelligence-based paraphrasing tools to write articles for their blogs.
However, it is important to note that Google penalizes duplicate or copied content. In addition, some publishers may take legal action against users who plagiarize their content because they are literally stealing copyrighted material.
Of course, it is almost impossible to write about topics that no one else has yet addressed. Whether you’re writing a post on the best SEO techniques or the must-see attractions in Rome there are probably already dozens of articles with the same tips.
Therefore, we recommend that you write articles yourself . You can also improve your existing posts by providing additional ideas and using original photos. Reworking your own content and updating it can get you better SERP positions than stealing someone else’s.
- Misuse of schema markup
Schema markup allows search engines to better understand what your content is about. When you add this code to your site, you get rich snippets of your pages in SERPs:
Rich snippets are search results that contain additional information, such as product ratings and prices. These snippets tend to have higher click-through rates (CTR) than standard links. Therefore, adding schema markup to your pages can help increase organic traffic and conversions.
However, don’t overdo it. Trying to cram a lot of keywords into schema markup can get you penalized. Also, some website owners may try to mislead users by providing inaccurate information. For example, a seller might post fake product reviews and add structured data to display positive reviews.
This kind of data misuse can hurt your positions. Therefore, we recommend that you follow Google’s rich snippet guidelines when optimizing your content.
- Webrings or private blog networks
Webrings, or private blog networks (PBNs), are groups of websites that link together. They are designed to create domain authority and increase each site’s ranking on Google.
You might, for example, create five travel blogs, each focused on a specific niche or topic. Then, you can regularly add links to and from these sites when you write posts.
This method may seem like an easy way to create backlinks. And it was! However, PBNs violate Google’s Webmaster Quality Guidelines and can result in ranking penalties. A few years ago, Google took direct action against PBNs, and if the search engine thinks your content is part of them, ayou will be in big trouble.
Of course it’s fine to link to your content from other sites you own. But be warned that it is not a huge group of similar websites just funneling traffic between them.
As mentioned earlier, there are more ethical ways to get links to your site . For example, you can contribute original posts to third-party websites. Also, if you have many high-quality articles on your site, other bloggers will gladly link to your posts within their content because they provide value.
- Junk mail on blog comments
If you run a blog you may already be familiar with comment spam. Sometimes, users post comments that contain lonks to their pages. The goal is to create free backlinks from different sites:
Although this technique can be effective, some website owners may simply mark your input as spam and ban you from posting. Therefore, we recommend that you avoid commenting on an article just to link to your site.
Instead, make sure your input is meaningful. You might, for example, share a tip or advice, then link to a relevant post that users might find useful. Some blogs even keep comments marked as nofollow to avoid this, discouraging people from leaving these types of comments because the site owner has asked search engines to ignore them.
Spam comments on your website can also hurt your blog. They make your site look unprofessional, which can damage your reputation. You may want to set up a comment moderation system to filter out spam content. Akismet is a basic plugin to start with if you are a WordPress user.
- Hiding content
Perhaps one of the sneakiest black hat SEO tactics is hiding content on your pages. This practice involves hiding certain text and links by making them the same color as the background so users can’t see it, but search engines will.
Here are some other common tactics for hiding content:
- Placing it behind an image
- Using a font size of 0 px
- Adding a class name to an element on your page and setting it to “hidden” in your CSS stylesheet
People generally use this technique to fill a page with keywork and increase positions by hiding the content from users. However, just because a person cannot see this content, this does not mean that robots cannot. Search engine algorithms are not easily fooled. Your website could be penalized for cloaking elements and filling pages with irrelevant content.
And even if the hidden content is relevant to the post, you can be knocked out of the game for trying to insert keywords.
- Sponsored pages and posts
If you are a blogger or content creator, you may have been approached by brands or websites offering a gift or monetary compensation in exchange for a link. Sometimes, they might even ask you to put an entire post on your blog that contains a URL pointing to their site.
However, Google considers these link schemes to be bad practices. Therefore, it is critical to disclose any sponsored links on your site. You can do this by using the ‘nofollow or sponsored attribute:
These attributes tell search engines to ignore those links when they rank your page. This way, Google will not associate your site with the linked page and will not crawl from your website. Your readers still get the value of sponsored content, the buyer gets brand awareness, but you are not penalized by Google and other search engines for having what might be shady business practices.
This is very similar to buying backlinks, as mentioned earlier, but it goes deeper because they’re not just buying a single link, they’re getting the attention of the entire audience.
- Cloaking
You may have already heard of cloaking. This technique can take different forms and is very different from hiding content on a particular page. In SEO, it refers to displaying different content for users and search engines.
One of the most common cloaking methods is to provide a page of HTML text to search engine crawlers while showing a page of images to users. Another example is to provide users with JavaScript-enabled browsers with a different version of the page than people who have JavaScript disabled.
This bait is a black hat SEO tactic because users will visit a site expecting X content and arrive there to potentially be bombarded with ads, irrelevant content, malware, unsafe site issues, and anything else. Google and other search engines have protections in place to warn site users that could harm them, their data, or their devices, but cloaking circumvents this and allows practitioners to provide users with unfiltered (and likely unwanted) content.
Google offers several tips for making your content accessible without cloaking. Following these guidelines will help you avoid violating the rules on cloaking and accessibility.
- Doorway pages
Doorways are websites or pages created to place similar keywords and direct users to the same content. For example, a website owner may publish multiple pages targeting specific regions that direct all users to the same landing page.
With this configuration, users searching for a particular search query may see several similar pages in the results. When they click on one of these options, they will be redirected to a different (and often unrelated) page. This is different from cloaking because it does not rely on baiting and switching, but instead leverages indexed content and true SEO tactics to funnel users to something unrelated and unwanted.
As you can probably see, this practice goes against Google’s guidelines and could have harmful consequences for your website. There is no white hat alternative to using doorway pages, so you should avoid this practice at all costs.
Conclusion
SEO is critical to the growth and success of your site. However, over-optimizing your content or using “shady” practices can lead to a significant drop in your rankings. In addition, search engines such as Google may ban and completely remove your site as it is involved in black hat SEO.
Black hat SEO practices include keyword stuffing, backlink buying and article spinning Google could also penalize you for cloaking content on your pages or manipulating structured data to increase your rankings. Therefore, whenever possible, we recommend that you instead use white hat SEO techniques and get your positions in SERPs the right way.