Digital marketing is a big platform where a lot of activities take place, SEO is the most important part of digital marketing, and black hat SEO is a part of search engine optimization.
With the increase in the number of articles and online publications every day, publishers are inevitably forced to look for creative ways to make their articles more visible on Google in order to increase the subscriber journey.
Fortunately, most don’t even think about using spammy, Black hat search engine optimization (SEO) techniques that can harm their website and result in penalties or blacklisting.
However, even people with good intentions may accidentally violate Google’s quality guidelines by adopting these tips.
If you are looking for a way to make money online without getting blocked or penalized by Google, spamming their search engine would not be the best option.
Now is the time for us to tell those who use these unethical tricks that it will no longer work, especially with the introduction of the real-time Penguin algorithm update, Which can detect and penalize sites that create backlinks with a large number of low-quality links that lead users to your website.
What are Black Hat SEO Techniques ?
Black hat SEO techniques manipulate search engine rankings or generate results in an unfair, unethical or undesirable manner.
There are six black hat techniques :
1. Hide Content
One of the most popular black hat techniques is to use spammy doorway pages, which are designed just for keywords, and thus, the content of these doorway pages is hidden from both users and search engines.
The primary purpose of door pages is to fool search engines into not indexing or ranking your website for synonym phrases or keywords.
2. Keyword Stuffing
Keyword stuffing is another black hat SEO tactics that involves the repeated use of exact keywords in an attempt to manipulate search engines through excessive use of keywords. This can be done on various webpages including the homepage and meta keyword tags.
It is a spammy SEO strategy that involves using irrelevant keywords in a webpage to make it more relevant to specific keywords, misleading Internet users who visit the site in search of useful information to meet their needs.
3. Link Cultivation
Link farming is done when multiple pages or websites are linked to your website. This is done to earn money through Pay-Per-Click (PPC) ads on these pages or websites.
The problem is that the links only point to your website because it promises them something in return when in reality, It only exists to increase popularity and traffic to any other page you own.
These sites are unethical and will undermine the credibility of other pages you have worked hard on, potentially hurting your potential income.
4. Cloaking
Cloaking is when you show different content to users and search engines. Users will see your website as it is, but search engines are shown a different piece of content that is not relevant to the actual content.
This is done to make a website appear higher on the search results page.
5. Spamdexing
Spamdexing is a black hat technique that involves using software to spam search engine results with backlinks.
It takes thousands of backlinks to your website and is done only to increase page rank or search engine ranking.
6. Unethical Redirects
A redirect link becomes untethered when it sends the user to a webpage other than the one shown in the link. For example, if you have a link that will take the user to site “XYZ”, but instead, it takes the user to “ABC”, it becomes unethical.
This is done because the link prompts users to follow the path you want them to take, even if they are not interested in the site they land on.
This type of black hat SEO practice should be avoided at all costs to stay within Google’s good qualities and protect the credibility of your online presence.
How does Black Hat SEO Work?
Some black hat techniques may show positive results, but sooner or later, Google will catch them and penalize the site. Let’s say the black hat technology you are using affects your website reputation or business.
This means it is time to stop, as this will result in your website being penalized or removed from the search engine index.
If you’re caught using spammy SEO techniques, you’ll not only get a manual penalty from Google, but you’ll also make it harder for your website to rank on search engine result pages if you haven’t been around forever.
If you are looking to grow your organization’s online digital marketing efforts, Zero Gravity Marketing has the expertise and experience to help you develop a customized, actionable digital marketing strategy that best suits your business.
Join us today and discuss how we can maximize the marketability of your business and help you avoid the pitfalls associated with black hat search engine optimization.
