SEO black hat techniques refers to any online marketing techniques that go against the terms and conditions of search engines such as Google and Bing. The reason so many online marketers use black hat methods is the belief that this will boost their rankings faster.
The truth is that these methods may boost website rankings in the short term, however in the long term these methods could be detrimental to your website rankings. Using black hat techniques could lead to your website being penalized or even de-indexed.
Black hat techniques that work today will always be outdated tomorrow due to the fact that search engines constantly update their algorithms. Making use of seo black hat techniques is essentially trying to trick search engines into believing you have a quality website rather than creating a quality website that will be trusted and rank naturally over time.
Here are a few examples of common seo black hat techniques:
Purchasing Backlinks
Using backlinks as a method to rank your website is outdated and can be detrimental to your website. This was a highly popular black hat method of ranking websites.
Keyword Stuffing
It refers to using your keyword repeatedly in your content. This method is also outdated now since Google will now penalize websites that has too many keywords in content.
Hidden Text
This refers to adding content to your website that visitors can’t see but the search engines do. For example using small font for text and links and making it the same colour as the background so that readers don’t see the text but the search engines do.
Content Spinning
This refers to using software to spin articles from another article. Often people find an article online and spin it to be an “original” article which they use for their website. These articles are made for Google, but not for human readers. Doing this creates content that is unreadable and not quality content.
Cloaking
This is when online markets creates one version of content for readers and another version of content for the search engines.
As you can see from these few examples it is clear these methods are trying to find a quick fix, they are not aimed at creating quality content for readers. It is conning the search engines and conning online visitors too.
There are loads more types of black hat techniques that I have not covered here and there will be plenty more to come. If you want to know whether a technique is black hat or white hat just ask yourself whether you are creating quality content or trying to trick the search engines into thinking you have. If you are creating quality content there will be no need to fool anyone will there? Yes your website won’t rank overnight, but it will rank if you are putting the work in and when it does it will stay ranked.
I honestly believe that if you use any seo black hat techniques to try and rank your website Google (and other search engines) will catch up with you eventually. It might work in the short term, but not long term.
Click here to read about White Hat Techniques, a much better way to rank your website!
Do you agree with this information, leave a comment below and share some black hat methods you have come across online!
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Nice article post! I always thought have backlinks help improve your website, it actually hurts now to have backlinks on your site? I thought Google liked it when you have a lot of external links linking to your website, isn’t that what backlinking is? I’m not sure if this is a blackhat technique, but what about paying for services that offer you 10K + hits a day?
Hi Weston
Back links can be useful and can help, but only when built naturally and over time. I wrote a post recently about back links and why they can be bad, click here to read it.. I would not pay for any service that says they will get you hits ever. Ask yourself how they will get these visitors to your website, are these REAL visitors or are they bots? What use are 10K visitors if they are not interested in your website and will not generate an income for you?
I would really focus on generating natural visitors, organic traffic. That is what you really want 🙂 It will take a lot more time, a lot more work and a lot of patience. The difference is that once you start getting organic visitors you will see how your rankings will improve even further. The only way to get these visitors is by creating quality content. Click here for more information on how to create quality content that the search engines will love.
I hope this answers your questions.
Kind Regards
Lynne
Hi Lynne,
I had never heard about SEO black hat techniques and being into online marketing myself this information has been very helpful. I am learning every day and your website is very useful for every one who starts into online marketing 🙂
It is a pleasure Angelique 🙂
Just be aware of it and if anyone wants to offer you SEO services remember that you can really do all you need to do yourself, don’t be tempted by all their promises of being able to rank your website quickly.
Kind Regards
Lynne
hi Lynne
I absolutely agree! One should be writing content for human readers not Google! I think those techniques are very deceiving and really they do not work. As you say they can actually be detrimental to your ranking and your site. Keyword stuffing is so annoying and your article just ends up sounding like junk. And the techniques such as cloaking and adding hidden text are just ridiculous! If your sole goal is to rank in Google then maybe you should not have a site. As you say, content and quality content is what is important. You need to engage human readers in your writing not Google. The ranking will come on its own afterwards.
Hi Emily
Thank you for your input! I honestly think all the SEO black hat techniques are used by firstly people that are new to working online and they research and think that these are good ways to get their websites ranked and are fooled by so called “SEO experts” and people that set up bad quality websites or scam websites which just won’t rank and then attempt to rank their websites using underhanded methods.
You are so right though, these methods will not work, certainly not in the long term!
Kind Regards
Lynne
Hey Lynne,
Interesting read.
I didn’t even know about most of those tactics, but I will certainly avoid them too.
Thanks!
Hi Alex
Glad you are now aware of the SEO black hat techniques and I am glad you will be avoiding them!
Kind Regards
Lynne
Thanks for writing on this topic! I wanted to learn more about these techniques so I’d be well equipped and this was exactly what I was looking for. I’m going to read about the white-hat techniques now 🙂
Hi Shaz
I am so glad I could help you learn about this topic, knowing the difference is really important. It can literally mean the difference between success and failure online. One wrong move using a black hat method can have such long lasting effect on your website that you could fail completely before you even get started.