Black Hat SEO Techniques that should be Avoided
Search Engine Optimisation SEO refers to the set of activities engaged in improving a website’s quantity and quality of traffic. The target of Search Engine Optimisation is unpaid traffic instead of paid or direct traffic. This is a digital marketing strategy that uses different techniques and tactics to increase the site’s visibility and, eventually, the website’s ranking.
The SEO techniques that violate the search engine’s terms of service to improve the site’s ranking are termed as Black hat SEO. Although it is not categorised as illegal, it can still get your website banned from search engines and lower your rank. To avoid black hat tactics and techniques, one must know about them.
Following are some recognised black hat SEO techniques that must be eluded to keep your website safe from getting banned from search engines like Google.
Content Automation
Content automation refers to publishing content generated automatically using specific tools, without human effort, and does not follow the general writing format. It does not include any pictures, paragraph spacing, HTML headings, or alignment. This technique fills your site with a lot of content in no time and establishes the risk of getting your website blacklisted on the search engine.
Sneaky Redirects
Redirect means directing the user to a different website than the one he clicked. Black hat SEO may use this tactic to redirect users on a site and search engine crawler to another website. Sneaky redirects may be used for turning users to a website to increase its position in the Search Engine Result Page.
Keyword Stuffing
Adding keywords unnecessarily in content to improve its ranking in search engine result pages is known as keyword stuffing. It makes your content appear inconsequential, having low quality, which is not helpful for the users. Not only this, keyword stuffing may lead to a penalty on your website by Google.
Article Spinning
The rewriting or crafting of manual or automated content to eradicate the risk of duplicate content and make it seem new and unique is termed as article spinning. This act is categorised as a black hat SEO because you do not provide any information and value to the users.
Automated Queries to Google
By sending automated queries to Google or any other search engine, the number of searches for a specific site or keyword is increased in the Search Engine Result Page SERP. Google penalises the websites that use this technique to improve their ranking in SERP.
Reporting a competitor or Negative SEO
Negative SEO is a vicious tactic used by websites to reduce or cut traffic from their competitors’ sites by misreporting their websites to penalise them. Due to this, the visibility of the website on SEO is decreased. The website that gets reported and punished does not even know who did this to them.
Duplicate content
Duplicate content is the content that is present on more than one website. This content is usually stolen from other websites. Using this tactic will lower the ranking of your website. Moreover, it can also get penalised by Google Panda.
Pages with malicious behaviour
The use of animated websites, Javascript, Java applications, browser plugins, or flash content for malware software to download files or display audio or video on the computer represents malicious behaviour by websites. Some common malware types are spyware, Trojan horses, bugs, bots, adware, worms, and viruses. This is an illegal technique and strictly prohibited by Google Guidelines.
Irrelevant keywords
The proper use of keywords is a white hat SEO technique and, on the other hand, is a Black Hat SEO technique that involves the use of irrelevant keywords. This is the wrong way to get ranking by using keywords that are entirely different and irrelevant to your content. This act of dishonesty may result in the loss of your loyal users.
Bait and Switch
The bait and switch technique represents changing a website’s content in the wrong way to get a page ranking. In this technique, a name consisting of specific keywords is typed on Google to get an order. After attaining the rank, the author replaces it with another project or product. When the users visit the site, they get something completely different.
Scraped Content
The act of thieving content from other websites and publishing it on your site without adding any original value from your site is called scraping the content. This practice is not only considered unethical but is also illegal in some countries. The scraping of content can be done either by a person or a bot. This type of content has no value for the users.
Clickbait
Clickbait aims to attract users and make them click impulsively on your website, expecting their desired content. The headline of the website is entirely different from the original content present on the website. This is a deceiving technique that is bad for your website in the long-run.
Web Rings
A webring represents several sites connected in a circular network like a ring for getting traffic from other related websites. The webmaster approves the websites that want to become a part of the webring. Without his approval, nobody can join the rink and get benefit from it.
Cloaking
Cloaking refers to showing content to a search engine different from the actual content offering to the users. Spam websites are usually involved in this practice. This practice of fooling search engine’s algorithms is against Google Guidelines and may penalise the website.
Parasite Hosting
Parasite hosting is an illegal way of accessing a website to create a web page. It is then used for promoting the Black Hat SEO technique’s practitioner’s website by keywords and links injected to it for this purpose. By this, the traffic on their desired website is increased. This technique is aimed at SERP spam.
Paid Links
Google and other search engines strictly prohibit the buying and selling of links. It may involve sending free products to a website in return for reviews and links. If Google detects the buying and selling of links, it penalises both the parties involved in the exchange.
Author’s Bio:
Michael Porter is an academic writer offering web content service at the Primewriting to students of the UK and other countries. He is an expert writer mastering in the topic like SEO, WordPress, and digital marketing. His articles reflect his expertise in this field.