What is Black Hat SEO: 10 Techniques to Avoid

In the world of SEO, we have clear policies to follow. Rules are established to provide a useful, relevant, and safe environment and to ensure the quality of user experience. Ranking high requires keeping up with current and changing SEO trends and constantly adjusting your approach to suit any new algorithm updates.

On the other hand, some people (spammers) try to outsmart search engines and bring organic traffic to their websites without following any rules, but instead, they break them. That’s the dark side of SEO.

If you are curious about the most common black hat SEO practices used to manipulate Google today, keep reading; I will reveal them in this article!

What is Black Hat SEO?

Before we get started with black hat SEO tactics, it is crucial to understand what they are. Black hat SEO is a search engine optimization tactic that works against search engine guidelines and manipulates the algorithms to make a website rank higher on the SERPs.

These unethical practices don’t add value to user experience and often result in huge penalties. In the worst case, the website may also see its metrics completely drop. Moreover, although black hat tactics yield instant results in the beginning, they are not beneficial if you consider their long-term impact.

Black Hat SEO vs. White Hat SEO

Black hat and white hat SEO are two sides of the same coin. Both SEO tactics aim to improve your website's search engine ranking; however, one uses ethical methods while the other uses unethical methods.

Now, from the name, you can definitely determine which tactic uses ethical methods and which one uses unethical methods.

Black Hat SEO, as the name suggests, seeks to exploit loopholes in search engine algorithms to manipulate a website's ranking. On the other hand, white hat SEO adheres to the guidelines of search engine algorithms and seeks organic growth.

Moreover, while black hat SEO can yield instant results, which are often short-term and lead to big penalties, white hat SEO techniques requires time to show significant results, but it is surely long-lived.

10 Black Hat Techniques in SEO

Link Farms

Link farms are similar to private blog networks or PBNs but use unethical methods in which a series of websites link to each other to improve their search engine ranking. This is typically done by creating a network of interconnected web pages that link to each other regardless of their relevance or quality. Google usually frowns upon link farms because they manipulate the ranking, and if the search engine catches any instance of a link farm, the entire website may be penalized.

According to old Google algorithms, the more backlinks, the more valuable and credible the web pages or websites were deemed to be. Moreover, there was little to no way to determine whether the backlinks to the website were genuine or fake. But the algorithms have advanced, and identifying link farms has become easier for search engines than ever. Hence, if website owners are still resorting to link farming to improve their search engine ranking, they are setting themselves up for failure.

Spam Comments

Have you ever witnessed a situation where a newly submitted comment on your website turned out to be a spammer with its worthless message and non-related promotional link?

Spam-Comments

Exactly, these are the actions we’re referring to.

Spam comments are intended to create free backlinks. Paid links gained in this way are 100% ‘nofollow’ and transfer no SEO juice, which makes this technique a real waste of time.

Nonetheless, it is currently one of the most popular black hat practices. What is more, it is not always done manually; there are even various tools available to sprinkle spam comments across the Web automatically.

Suppose your blog is open for commenting without anyone controlling its quality, sooner or later. In that case, you are going to get spam comments, which will leave a negative impression on the users and lower the rate of their user experience. That’s why it’s better to prevent blog comment spam before it makes your readers feel uncomfortable and discourages them from leaving any valuable comments.

Remember, spam comments also harm your blog by making it look neglected and unprofessional. This is why you should wait and approve the comments after filtering out the spam using blocking plugins.

Duplicate Content

As the name suggests, duplicate content refers to the well-known “copy and paste” content creation practice across domains. It means that blocks of copied content from different sources exactly match each other or look very much alike. Search engines prefer unique and relevant content, which is why content purposely duplicated across different domains is perceived as one of the worst black hat techniques. When the same results are found in the Google listing, it is a clear sign of manipulation of search engine rankings, and it usually results in a poor user experience.

Duplicate content concerns not only one domain but also different domains. However, the second case isn’t as serious because it’s usually a sign of lack of knowledge or neglect. Therefore, it is crucial to implement a canonical tag to indicate the original version of your article. This way, you make other copies invisible to Google bots.

Article Spinning

Article spinning is a technique similar to the duplicate content issue (above) and is continually getting more popular. This is next-level plagiarism, and it involves using special software that takes the copied source and rephrases it for later use as a “new” or “unique” post. Modification efficiently cuts down the risk of being detected by any plagiarism tool.

Cloaking

What happens when you insert the term “cloaking” into the Google search bar? You will be given a Google Knowledge result, which first explains “cloaking” as a search engine technique that presents completely different content or URL to the user than to the search engine spider.

In fact, this SEO method is considered deceptive because it tricks search engines in order to get the desired ranks for target keywords. Moreover, it’s a violation of Google Webmaster Guidelines because, in most cases, it serves people with irrelevant results.

Search Console Help provides us with the most common cloaking examples:

Serving a page of HTML text to search engines while showing a page of images or Flash to users.

Inserting text or keywords into a page only when the user-agent requesting the page is a search engine, not a human visitor.

Once negative ranking factors such as JavaScript-Hidden Content, Empty Link Anchors, or Meta/JavaScript Redirects are spotted by Google; it may end up receiving cloaking penalties, which can devastate your website’s long-term performance.

Doorway Pages

In other words, gateway pages, jump pages, or bridge pages are specially optimized for targeted keywords and designed to rank high for particular queries. These landing pages have very little value and are solely used to trick the search engines and transfer a visitor from a chosen result to another, unrelated destination.

Keyword Stuffing

This well-known black hat SEO technique is no longer as applicable as it used to be in the past.

Now, search engines are too smart to get dodged with this simple trick.

By definition, keyword stuffing involves overusing the same keywords throughout one page to maximize its visibility and organic traffic. Content stuffed with keywords doesn’t look natural, and because of this, it’s not user-friendly. While keyword stuffing is not a great practice, websites need to conduct in-depth keyword research to ensure that their page ranks for relevant search queries. Positionly’s Website Optimization Grader can detect keyword stuffing on your page and warn you about its consequences. Try it now!

Invisible Text

To put this straight, invisible text means implementing white text, a list of keywords, on a white background. This method makes keywords completely invisible to a visitor, but search engine crawlers can still detect and index them.

Sneaky Redirects

Sneaky redirects are deceptive redirects that take search engines and users to different web pages. In sneaky redirects, the search engine crawlers are generally redirected to content-rich pages, while the actual users are sent to unrelated or spammy websites.

Sneaky redirects are a clear violation of the Google Webmaster guidelines and result in huge penalties that lead to your website ranking low or being removed from search results altogether.

Now, the point is, if sneaky redirects are so harmful, why do website owners resort to this practice? Well, owners of some prohibited niches, such as gambling, betting, and pharmaceuticals, use sneaky redirects to bring traffic to their websites, and in many cases, these tactics also improve their web page ranking. However, in the long run, sneaky redirects won’t bring any significant results, and it is essential to steer clear of them.

Overused Anchor Text

Just like overusing the keyword in your content makes it look spammy, the same goes for your anchor text as well. Using the anchor text or any of its variations too many times in your content will result in the content feeling spammy and forced. Moreover, it may also result in some serious penalties by the search engine, which may result in your website being totally removed from the results pages.

Hence, website owners must aim to strike a balance between the length of the content and the number of times anchor text must be used. It is also advisable to use the anchor text in a way that flows naturally with the content and adds value to the user experience rather than being placed just because it is a “good” SEO practice.

Why You Should Avoid Black Hat SEO

Although black hat SEO can quickly improve your website's search ranking compared to white hat SEO strategies, it is not the best measure to take if you want long-term success. Here are three reasons why you shouldn’t use black hat SEO for your website:

1. Negatively Impacts Search Ranking and Visibility

Black hat SEO results in your website losing ranking and visibility, which in turn means it will also lose website traffic.

Moreover, since all search engine optimization metrics are interlinked, less website traffic leads to lower conversion rates, which in turn impacts your website's ROI.

In such a situation, the website owner might have to invest extra money in PPC campaigns and other paid media, which may not be a great idea if one is under a budget constraint.

• Inability to Drive Long-Term Results 

Black hat SEO rarely offers sustainable results. Although it does take some time for Google to understand these unethical practices, when it does, the ranking of the website severely drops. Black hat SEO works like a negative SEO strategy and must be avoided if you want to achieve long-term results.

• Poor User Experience 

One of the most crucial factors that a search engine considers when ranking your website is the user experience. When you use black hat SEO tactics, your website's user experience is severely hampered, which in turn leads to your website losing online traffic.

Tactics such as keyword and anchor test stuffing, sneaky redirects, duplicate content, and cloaking might result in momentary manipulation of the algorithms, resulting in an improvement in search rankings. But it doesn’t add any value to the user experience as they won’t be able to find relevant content on your website, which will result in your website losing its valuable ranking.

How To Avoid Black Hat SEO

If you are new to search engine optimization, it is easy to get confused about which tactics to use and which to avoid. A harsh reality of search engine optimization is that it takes a lot of time and consistent efforts to actually see noticeable results. So, while it is easy to get tempted by quick success, it is essential that you absolutely avoid black hat SEO tactics, even though they have been proven to yield significant results.

Black hat SEO seeks to lure users with deceptive content, but eventually, the website tends to lose credibility.

So, how do we avoid black hat SEO tactics? The answer is that website owners need to be very cautious about the SEO strategies they follow. Anything that promises quick results must be followed with caution. Moreover, it is absolutely crucial to ensure that you are not using any of the black hat SEO tactics mentioned above.

By following caution and being aware of the Google webmaster's guidelines, you will be able to avoid black hat SEO successfully. Moreover, it is also essential to report black hat SEO tactics on Google Console to ensure the search algorithms are not manipulated.

Conclusion

Although black hat SEO tactics may look appealing in the short term, they are not the best approach if you are looking for sustainable results.

It takes a lot of effort and consistency to actually yield noticeable results in the game of search engine optimization. The ultimate goal of every website owner must be to establish themselves as industry leaders and improve their ROI. So, while there is no denying that black hat SEO tactics do bring fast results, there is a high possibility that you might lose credibility.

Hence, it is recommended that you follow the Google webmaster guidelines and aim for slow but long-lasting growth through white hat SEO tactics.