If you are a new blogger then you should know about the SEO techniques to rank your blog or website better in search engines, however, there are some seo Practices that are not approved by search engines and are not good for your blog’s ranking and can damage your presence in search engines. they are usually defined as a group of practices that will increase the rank of a page in search engines engine result (SERP). We call them Black hat seo techniques, these disapproved practices are used to manipulate google to bring traffic on targeted keyword.
The term “black hat” was created in Western films to separate “bad people” from “good people”, who wore white hat. Recently, it is commonly used to describe those who do unethical work with computer hackers, virus makers and computers.
Google webmaster guidelines has clear policies to follow for everyone. these rules were made to provide a useful and relevant experience to the users. If you want to rank high then you will have to keep up with the changing seo trends and will have to adjust according to the new updated algorithms.
But there are always some spammers who instead of using the right ways to rank high try to manipulates the search engine by using the shady tactics of black hat seo to get there.
These unethical tactics don’t solve for the searcher and often end in a penalty from search engines.
Black hat SEO techniques:
I am goning to tell you about nine most common and used black hat seo techniques in this article
1. Paid Links
Buying backlinks is considered as a black hat seo technique and is banned by the search engines. People buy links because its very easy and there are some undeniable advantages to the buyer. They do not have to worry about the quality of the content once the transaction is done. Secondly, they can also choose the anchor text (A Strong ranking factor) according to their preference. And these things are considered as manipulatives tactics to rank higher, which is why this seo technique has been classified as a serious black hat. There only goal is to accumulate links. That is why you You should avoid buying links from any other site to link to your content.
According to Matt Cutts (the former head of Google’s webspam team): Most of the time things are incredibly obvious: people are paying outright money for link based on PageRank, trying to get higher rankings, flowing PageRank. He also said that: Ninety-nine percent of the time it is clear that there are links that are being bought and paid and are being sold and it is all kinds of goods.
2. Spam Comments
It is a common situation when somebody notices that there is are comments on their websites with a message praising the site and a non-related promotional link with it. These types of comments are known as spam comments.
Blogs, videos, and more content are open to general public to comments on them. Spam Comments are meant to create free backlinks. The links obtained with this method are considered as ‘no follow’ and do not transfer any Seo. This practice is currently one of the most popular black hat techniques. People are doing it with the help of various tools that are available to leave comments on posts. They do not have to do it manually.
If you do not want your blog to get spam comments then prevent them before they leave a negative impression on the users and discourage them from leaving valuable comments. It also makes your blog look unprofessional.
So, make sure that your comments section is not filled with spam comments either by bots or people. You can use blocking plugins to prevent these types of comments.
3. Keyword stuffing
When a word is repeatedly used over and over again in an article or paragraph is known as keyword stuffing. Search engines works on keywords that are being used on websites to determine whether a site is a good match for search result or not. For example, if you search “latest movies” the results will list sites using a word or related words in the results text.
So people got the idea that they can take advantage of that by adding a significant amount of keywords to help their site to appear in the search results. So if you have ever witnessed a website with a long list of similar words, then the site is using keyword stuffing.
Generally, people do not use the same word multiple times in the same paragraph. For example, imagine that someone is selling you a watch and says, “Hello, I have a watch and it is the best watch. A watch is always a necessary watch, everyone has a watch to see the time and if you need a watch then buy this watch.” The person sounds crazy, nobody talks like that. It is highly recommended not to use keyword stuffing because adding irrelevant keywords to manipulates the search engine can be penalized by the google for poor and low-quality content but it also gives a bad experience to the users.
However, this technique is no longer popular now as google noticed that content with a great keyword density is not relevant for the users and updated its algorithms to prevent these type of black hat practices.
4. Cloaking
Cloaking refers to a practice in which a site prepares two different sets of information, one page for the users and a different page that goes to the search engine. So, when you search for something on google and find the desired results but when you click on the link you find an entirely different website. This technique is often used by the people who try to avoid the search engine bot to find out the spam content they serve to users. The people who use this strategy on search engines in order to make their content rank, causes trouble to the users coming to the site.
Using cloaking is against the Google Guidelines, because cloaking is considered as a manipulative black hat way to fool search engine’s algorithm. If you are using this method to rank your website in the search results then you are also risking of being penalized by google penguin.
5. Doorway Pages
Doorway pages are created to rank high in search result for a given set of keywords, and has no or very little value. Spammers create these pages solely for the purpose to trick the search engine and transfer the traffic to another unrelated page. It is an adapted way of redirecting.
These sites offer no value to anyone and gives a bad user experience to the visitors as well. However, Google is reasonably vehement about them for creating harsh repercussions and launched a newdoorway page penalty algorithm for these types of technique.
6. Invisible Text and Links
Keyword stuffing is not the only way to manipulate the search engines by using keywords. Invisible texting is a technique that involves additional hidden keywords or links. in other words, websites owners hide some irrelevant keywords from the readers to make it humanly readable. They implement white text or a list of keywords on a white background to make them invisible to the readers.
However, Search engine can still see them and count them as part of the site. So, when somebody clicks on a link, they searched for but finds a website that has no relation to the words they searched for. That is why this strategy is also in the list of black hat seo technique. These keywords do not make any sense, their sole purpose is to manipulate search engine in order to rank high in search results. There are some more ways hide text like setting the font size to 0 and hiding a link to a single character.
7. Duplicate Content
Duplicate content is the content that is exactly same and appears on different sources on internet. People duplicate content purposely to manipulate search engine and rank high in the search results. However, search engines prefer to present unique and valuable content but it becomes difficult to find the correct information for the users, when there are multiple sites with stolen content are there to manipulate them.
There is no use of a search engine to list many sites with the same content. What is the point if all the site listed in the search result are exactly the same, it is disappointing and gives a bad experience to the users. Who would want to sort through various sites to find same content again and again. it’s not relevant to the user. that is why this technique is considered as a black hat, it will damage the ranking of your site.
So instead of copying the content purposely for your site it is better to write original, informative and valuable content and focus on the content marketing. You can also use plagiarism checker tools that are available on internet to avoid the duplicating the content.
8. Link Bait and Switch
This strategy refers to a practice in which somebody revitalize their content into a commercial one. First, they gather links to their site and when they realize that they have enough links, they change it completely into a different one. The sole purpose for this trick is to gain high quality links and fool the search engines in order to rank high in search results and bring more traffic to the website.
9. Link Farms
in this strategy people develop multiple websites and each website links to a site they want to rank higher in search results. The links usually have the keyword within them for which they want the site to rank.
The sole purpose of this technique is also the same as all of them to build links. spammers know that the websites with maximum number of backlinks are ranked higher in the search results, and exploits it by using link farm to inflate the numbers of links to a particular site. However, google can easily detect these links so its better not to use link farm and stick to white hat seo technique.
Why you should avoid black hat seo Techniques
Building backlinks is not as easy as it seems. But there are many intricacies in this process and there are certain steps to follow to expand your link profile. Prefer to use strategies that are not tricky or manipulative stick to the white hat seo technique with loyalty and it will help you to rank higher in search results and help you to bring organic traffic to your site. You can only get short-term success by using these techniques because they are against the rules and violates webmaster guidelines. If you are practicing black hat technique then you are having a high risk of getting your site penalized by search engines as google penalties are getting even more sophisticated day by day. You site will have devastating consequences and ultimately you will have less traffic. Sooner or later your site will be detected. Getting a penalty from search engines will cause your website to drop down in the search results or worse, it could be removed completely.
