Black hat SEO practices are something that all website owners should be familiar with and ultimately avoid. Black hat SEO is a marketing term that refers to website optimization tactics that are intended to manipulate search engine rank.
While some argue that black hat SEO is essential to the survival of an online business in a competitive market, most SEO experts view black hat SEO as a practice and a risk that are simply not worth taking.
Black hat SEO is highly frowned upon by search engine giants like Google and, if discovered, could lead to massive penalties, site de-indexing, and removal of your website from Google’s search engine listings.
Common black hat SEO techniques that you should avoid:
1. Keyword Stuffing
Excessive repetition of keywords and phrases in a single piece of content is considered keyword stuffing, which is a black hat technique of artificially boosting the ranking of pages on search engines. With the evolution of search engines and their algorithms, keyword stuffing is seen less and less. As far a ranking factor Search Engine Journal believes that keyword stuffing is a confirmed negative ranking factor.
2. Hidden Text and Links
Including text and links on your website that are not visible to visitors, such as tiny text, white text on a white background, and links placed in a page’s code rather than in the body of text, is against search engine guidelines and is a practice that could lead to possible penalties.
3. Cloaking
Cloaking is a practice that can be used to deceive search engine spiders by providing optimized code and content based on an IP address to direct users to different versions of a website while using the same URL.
4. Paid Links
Although paying for links can help boost a website’s ranking, it’s not something that should be done without careful consideration since search engine algorithms are intelligent enough to detect unnatural links. Another way to describe this black hat SEO tactic is link spam.
5. Article Spinning
Article spinning is a highly frowned upon technique that involves rehashing and repackaging the same content hundreds of times. This not only creates low-quality content, but also makes it difficult for search engines to crawl and index.
In Conclusion
Taking the necessary steps to improve website rankings without falling into any black hat techniques can help ensure your website’s ranking success in the long run, as well as improve overall user experience and satisfaction with your website’s content.
It’s important to remember that when it comes to search engine rankings, quality always trumps quantity. Quality content, on-page optimization, and off-page optimization are still among the most effective ways of improving website rankings.
When it comes to rankings, it pays to be patient as it takes time to build a strong and credible brand on search engine listings, and any attempt at manipulating rankings through black hat practices is more likely to result in damage than success.
Quality content, careful keyword research, and building strong relationships with other websites in your industry are the best practices for creating long-term marketing success. Avoiding any of these techniques is not only beneficial to website rankings, but could also help you avoid the potential of facing severe penalties or getting black-listed by search engines.
If you’re looking for help on the best way to grow your organic footprint that is Google Friendly, reach out to Lewis Media Group today.