With the ever-growing importance of Search Engine Optimization (SEO), it is understandable that one wants to scale the search engine results page as quickly as possible. By being present on top of the results more targeted customers will visit the website, and these visitors can be converted, plus more. However, some of these methods are not correct methods to achieving this. Black hat SEO techniques profess quick outcomes but come with lots of challenges. They expose one to search engine over punishment, the threat of losing one’s worth, and the exposure of one’s website to moral decay.
In this article, we will look at some of the most common types of black-hat SEO and what mistakes should be avoided and why to prevent a website from being banned by a search engine.
What is Black Hat SEO?
Simply put, black hat SEO describes practices that are used to achieve top rankings in search engine results through dishonest means. Such methods are against the policies stipulated by search engine providers and are meant to boost the ranking of a web page in a shorter period through underhanded methods. Nevertheless, as effective as these techniques can be, they are not permanent because one of the major search engines that is Google is forever changing their algorithms to avoid this from happening.
Black hat SEO may attract adverse action from search engines and the possible consequences may include the website auto number dropping or even removal of your website key details from all search engines online such as Google or Yahoo.
Why You Should Stay Away From Black Hat Practices
Looking at the brighter side, black hat SEO may improve a website’s rankings but the drawbacks are numerous. Here are some key reasons why you should steer clear of these tactics:
Penalties From Search Engines: Black seo tactics can get your website banned by Google and other search engines. These penalties can last years if not forever, thus stifling your income and web traffic.
Loss of Trust: Engaging in forbidden practices may cause your website to lose its intended purpose. Once Google has issued a fine against your website, you can be sure your website will never be the same again as it is always hard to gain back the trust of both parties.
Awful Outcomes for Users: The tightest and the appealing definitions are logged within black hat SEO. Some of the techniques may work out but there is always a negative impact on the user behavior where website visitors bounce out due to inefficiency. A poor user experience often spells doom for the brand and the conversion rates.
Hard To Recover: In most cases, if your site has a Google penalty, it gets involved in endless and strenuous processes to regain its normality back. There are some punishments that are such a big blow to clients that, they never recover their ranking.
Keyword Stuffing
Keyword stuffing refers to the unnatural practice of repeating keywords on the content, body, meta tags or alt texts in any way in order to make those keywords rank for those terms. Adding some keywords is a common and effective practice in SEO, but when the keywords are crammed up in a page it makes the content comes out as unwanted and deceitful.
Why it’s Harmful
Results based on user experience are very much weighed in the case of search engines mainly Google. Content with keyword stuffing does not only look bad for reading but also have little relevance in value for the audience. This is a tactic that Google understands and will punish sites that overuse keywords.
How to Avoid It:
Instead of concentrating on cramming every keyword possible on your page, content planning should aim at quality, which has the reader at the center. Rather, each keyword should be integrated into the content as appropriate so that it not only adds to the writing but improves the readers’ experience.
Cloaking
Cloaking, as the word implies, is the act of distorting how your information is shown for either search engines or users; you show search engines different page from the one shown to the user’s authentic version. This is done so as to get higher placement for content keywords or content which are not actually seen by the visitors
Why it’s Harmful:
Cloaking is a form of manipulation that clearly disregards the rule of discipline by every site owner, blogger or web marketer. Both users and search engines are misled, which is why sites that engage in cloaking are punished heavily or completely banished from search results.
How to Avoid It:
Make sure that you do not contradict or deceive any of the content presented. There should be full transparency on both the user and search engine end such that the same page of the website is made available to both parties.
Purchasing Links
Backlinks are of great importance for a rank, but generating them via link schemes or link purchases is a grey hat method. While there is no doubt about the efficacy of purchased links in enhancing page rankings, search engines manage to look down on the technique.
Why it’s Harmful:
Natural backlinks are ones which are gained naturally from other websites because they endorse the content of the site. Purchasing links leads to developing an unnatural link profile, which eventually leads to some ranking penalties.
How to Avoid It:
Implement link-building techniques that do not involve purchasing links. Produce outstanding content that other websites would want to link to without you soliciting for them, and build healthy relationships that create real links.
Hidden Text and Links
The practice includes concealing text or links that are visible to search engines but are not visible to the users. Such practices include use of color contrast in which white text is placed in white background, masking text with images or reducing the text size to a point of invisibility.
Why it’s Harmful:
According to Google, this is classified as a black hat SEO and therefore should not be employed as there is a high risk of being caught and unduly punished. This applies mainly to websites that utilize such manipulatory practices.
How to Avoid It:
All of the text and links within your site should be apparent and pertinent to the user’s experience with the website. Do not attempt to alter the rankings by conceal image or any other non-content elements from view on your page.
Unoriginal content
This is content that is identical or almost alike to material found on other pages, be it on the same website or on an entirely different website. This is more rampant on pages with similar content that are optimized for the same keyword trying to position a number of them.
Why it’s Harmful:
There is a reason why search engines like yahoo and Google have been designed in such a manner as to help their users devoid of duplicated content. It leads to the situation where, since the same content has interlinks with different pages, all of them lose their visibility for search engines. In very extreme scenarios, duplicate content may prompt search engines to deliver a penalty.
How to Avoid It:
Turn to writing unique content on each of your pages. In case there is a need to have similar content, apply canonical tags to such a content to indicate the preferable version or add noindex directives to prevent duplication penalties.
Doorway pages
Doorway pages are low-quality landing pages, which are designed to rank for certain keyword phrases and link to internal pages or other sites. Such pages add minimal to no usefulness and are purely obtained in the name of SEO.
Why it’s Harmful:
Doorway pages are perceived by Google as a type of spamming as they is a form of advertising permutations of which adds no value to the user. Those who deploy doorway pages run the risk of being penalized or being completely wiped out from search engines.
How to Avoid It:
Design effective landing pages that help in addressing the users/existing clients concerns. Make it a rule that all the pages on your site should add value to your visitors rather than just merely ranking your site.
Conclusion
There is no doubt that black hat SEO strategies can be very alluring since results are seen in a short time/term. However, the end results will eventually be too costly. High risk of incurring penalties from search engines to loss of reputation is definitely what t using any underhand means to rank will do. This includes increased traffic, sales, and trust once lost.
On the contrary, concentrate on white hat SEO techniques which are acceptable to search engines and are beneficial for the users as well. By focusing on high-quality articles, fair link building, and nice experience for the users, you will not only shield your site from penalties, but also guarantee future triumphs within the realm of SEO.
