Black Hat SEO: Disapproved Practices of Unethical Ranking

What is Black Hat SEO? Is this a new technique to highlight your brand’s digital presence, or does this includes disapproved practices that Google no longer entertains?

Back hat SEO has nothing to do with fashion statements. It’s a combination of shadow-optimization techniques embraced by search engine professionals to confuse the search engine in ranking their websites higher.?

Generally, Black Hat SEO techniques try to mimic the White Hat SEO activities (the authentic and recommended SEO practices). Where authentic SEO techniques take months or even years to bring the desired results, Black Hat SEO techniques are used to reap the same benefits in a few days or weeks.

There are many ways how Black Hat SEO is performed. Still, some of the most frequent ones are Keyword Stuffing, Schema Markup scams, plagiarised content,? Invisible Text, low-quality redirects, spammy comments, etc.

Let’s go deeper into this and understand the who-why-when-how of Black Hat SEO techniques. Shall we?

What Exactly is Black Hat SEO?

Black Hat SEO is an unethical practice of increasing a website or a page rank in Google, Bing, or other search engines.

Also, 'Black Hat SEO' or Black Hat Search Engine Optimizers are the professionals who do not abide by Google or other search engine promoted guidelines to rank their website higher within an impossibly short period.

Search Engine Optimization methods are classified into three groups based on the holistic intention and the ethics of the tactics used:

• White Hat SEO
• Gray Hat SEO
• Black Hat SEO

Gray Hat SEO combines black and white hat SEO techniques like the colour palette. Also, thanks to constant changes and upgrades in the search engine guidelines, today's white-hat techniques can be tomorrow's grey or back hat techniques and vice-versa.

White Hat SEO

You are doing white hat SEO when you're abiding by the search engine terms of service and not using unethical practices to rank higher on SERPs.

Black Hat SEO?

You're into black hat SEO, where you go against the search engine guidelines and use unethical tactics like keyword stuffing, duplicate content, manipulating links, snippets, scams, etc., to rank on the SERPs.

The Difference Between White Hat SEO and Black Hat SEO Techniques

For a business to survive, showing up on the first page of search results for multiple relevant keywords is crucial.?

Going via the White SEO route will work, but it will take several months. Please keep in mind that the search engine only ranks websites with high domain authority scores in search results. Increasing the domain authority takes months of time and resources.

Black Hat SEO practices will get you a position on the search results page by manipulating the search engines but will harm your website's domain authority in the long run.

These unethical SEO tactics damage your presence on the web rather than improve it in the longer run.

Black Hat SEO tactics should be avoided at any cost, as the penalties cast by the search engines can be years-long or even lifelong. Search engines can completely delist the domain or even take down your page and delete it forever. Even zillions of websites with commendable page authority and thousands of backlinks get penalized by Google every year due to these malpractices.

Every SEO Expert Should Avoid These Toxic Black Hat SEO Techniques:

Taking the route of Black Hat SEO can harm your brand in many ways.So, before wearing your SEO hat, make sure you are not doing any of these -

Publishing Duplicate Content

Simply put, duplicate content is known as plagiarised content. This happens when the same fragment of content with identical intent is found on one or more web pages.?

When one content piece is found on more than one website, it initially confuses the search engine regarding which content is more authoritative and should be placed higher in the search engine.

In such cases, the older content with more authoritative backlinks is higher. The other webpage, on the contrary, generally faces huge traffic loss due to a drastic drop in ranking.

What types of content do search engines love?

• Original, in-depth content
• Content with higher search intent
• Internal and external backlinks
• The author's bio included
• Annotations for claims and studies

Typosquatting

Often people register a website that is a misspelled version of a popular website or is a competitor website to mislead the visitors and redirect them to their website.

For example - You click on the website blackboy.com and it will take you to another website by a similar name blakcboy.com.

Search engines penalize the websites that hijack others' URLs, and they may even ban your website.

Cloaking

Cloaking is an unfair technique where the website coding is such that the information presented to the user differs from the information provided to search engine robots or spiders.?

It makes the crawlers believe that the content on the page is different and unique from others and gives it a ranking in the SERPs.?

There are various types of Cloaking, and using them causes the banning of the websites temporarily or permanently.

Structured Snippets Spam

Structured Snippets are a great way of providing the user with the information they are looking for in the shortest time possible and also help index the site.?

Often it is seen that people use snippet markup for reviews, but in reality, they don't have a policy for reviewing on the site. Also, snippet spams are so frequently seen that Google has to devise a "report rich snippet spam" tool.?

Fake reviews, fake recommendations, credentials of another business, showing the entire online store's number of reviews for individual products, misleading and false customer testimonials, etc., are a few of the snippet spams.

Add Accurate Schema Markup to help your customers make quick and educated decisions, not mislead them.

Using Private Blog Network

Private networks utilize a network of websites or a collection of blogs to generate links to the site for it to rank better on search engines.?

It helps create massive links from different domains to a particular site, boosts the primary website authority, and helps rank higher in the SERPs.

SEO-enrich your website so people naturally link to you rather than using unethical tactics.

Over-Optimising Web Pages

"Excess of anything is bad" - as the old saying goes while optimizing your page is recommended for ranking in the search results, overdoing it can work against you.

The website's excessive usage of SEO elements, like too many internal links, keyword-stuffed titles and content, over-optimized anchor text, etc., is considered Black Hat SEO practices and can be penalized.

5 Worst Black-Hat SEO Techniques to Avoid in 2023

Keyword Stuffing

It is the practice of using the same set of keywords repetitively in the content to manipulate rankings In the search engines.?

Engaging in Keyword Stuffing will not only make the content sound robotic and unnatural to your readers but also indicate the search engines negatively. While keywords are undoubtedly one of the most significant SEO ranking factors, they will only work when the keyword density is around 3%, and they are all relevant to the flow of the content.

Link Buying

Whenever someone links to your website, the search engine counts it as a 'vote of authenticity' for the value-add to your webpage. But link-building should always be natural, spontaneous, and never paid.

Purchasing links is a severe breach of Google Webmaster Guidelines and could attract a heavy penalty if found guilty.

Doorway Pages

All Search Engines have one thing in common: They want to provide the best user experience.

When a user clicks on any website and is redirected to another irrelevant website, the website is more often than not penalized due to the inconvenience created for the users.

Doorway pages redirect to multiple similar intent pages in user search results, where every click takes to the same destination.

Comment Spam

Commenting on a content piece is an excellent way to foster relationships and enhance bloggers' confidence.

But if you are spamming in the comment section, leaving irrelevant links with stuffed keywords will destroy your brand and attract a penalty.

Using Hidden Text

Using Hidden Text to stuff keywords or increase the word count in the page's background using CSS is against the search engine's guidelines.?

Search engine Crawlers are more intelligent than ever, and it is straightforward for them to identify that you are trying to spam with the keywords. A genuine-intent comment carries way more value than 100 spammy comments.

How To Avoid Black Hat SEO?

• Always abide strictly by the rules of the search engines. Please don't do anything against the search engines' guidelines, and always stay updated with their guidelines.
• Never buy or sell links for rankings; create original and helpful content that other people want to link to.
• Don't opt for the Private Blog Network tactic; spend that time thinking about improving your content.
• Add Accurate Schema Markup. Abide by its rules.
• Avoid Cloaking; instead, try giving a great user experience through content.
• You can just avoid any manipulation through misleading redirects.
• Creating unique content isn't easy, but this is the most critical component that either makes your brand or breaks it. It would be best to spend time creating original content your users want rather than implementing black hat SEO techniques to rank higher.

How to Report Black Hat SEO?

So you have spotted a person or a competitor who is doing well in the search engine results by violating the google webmaster guidelines and is still not penalized for doing it.?

You can file a spam report to the search engine against it if you have found any website using Black Hat SEO Techniques for ranking higher in the SERPs.

Conclusion

Though in today's date, the number of SEO executives using black hat SEO has drastically come down, there are still some novice professionals who endanger their websites in return for some momentary benefits.

Many startups also make these mistakes while trying to do everything by themselves. Especially with these niche skills and expertise, it's always better to consult experts with proven track records with big brands in diversified industries.?

Frequently Asked Questions?

Is Black Hat SEO a punishable offence?

Yes, it is punishable, but not in official government laws. If caught doing it, you risk entirely delisting from the search engine, permanently banning, or dropping rankings.

Can Black Hat SEO Techniques still be used?

Over time the algorithms of search engines are getting smarter, and implementing black SEO techniques will not bring any results.

Even if you have found success using it, you will soon be penalized because of the constant improvements in the algorithms and databases of search engines.