SEO has never before been so crucial for the success of a business. As per Statista, the current internet penetration rate stands at 59 percent. And 68 percent of online experiences start on a search engine.
Therefore, unless you are online, you are likely to miss out on an excellent opportunity of engaging with your targeting audience. However, merely having a website or social media presence does not guarantee that your visitors will be able to find you.
For starters, as per Advanced Web Ranking, 32 percent of the organic traffic goes to the first link displayed. Additionally, only a meager amount of visitors (0.78 percent) bother perusing the second page of search results, as reported by Backlinko. This means that the search engine position of your webpage matters.
This is where search engine optimization (SEO) comes in. SEO refers to a variety of methods that aims to ensure that a given website ranks highly on search engines. But, not all SEO techniques are worth implementing.
Instead, there are certain black hat SEO tactics that violate guidelines and hence tarnish a business’s reputation in the long run. You must steer clear of such techniques. Here are five of the most common black hat SEO tactics you must avoid.
1. Keyword Stuffing
According to Content Marketing Institute, 57 percent of marketers find on-page content development and keyword optimization to be an excellent SEO tactic. However, if done poorly, the same technique can backfire.
Keywords refer to the words that visitors use when searching for a query. By including it in your content, you can increase the chance of your website being displayed in a respectable position for the query.
However, the keyword you add must be relevant to the content you are displaying on your website. Merely stuffing it for the sake of it can tank your site’s ranking rather than improve it.
Often, keyword stuffing occurs in blocks of content that stands out from the rest of the content. Other times, they don’t make sense within the context being discussed.
Some of the examples of this black hat SEO tactic mentioned by Google include:
- Adding a list of phone numbers that don’t add any value to the content
- Adding a block of texts that merely lists down all cities the business is trying to rank for
- Repeating the same phrase or word in an unnatural way
Avoid such stuffing at all costs. Make sure that the keywords you add to your content are relevant to the point you are making. Also, keep it within a density of 2 percent.
If you are unable to crack the code of keyword optimization, it is best to seek help from an SEO company. It is often a smart idea to opt for a local company. For instance, if your business is limited to Orlando, an Orlando SEO company will help you in optimizing your content.
2. Duplicate Content
According to a study cited by Search Engine Land, in 2015, 29 percent of websites display duplicate content! While a little bit of duplication is inevitable, considering that most of us are used to using similar phrases and expressions, blatant plagiarism is a cardinal sin in the world of SEO.
Now, there are two ways duplication of content sometimes used in an attempt to boost ranking. Firstly, a business might be tempted to copy and paste content from different sources to churn out a healthy number of blogs on its website. If you do this, search engines will detect it and penalize you.
Another hack used by businesses is a duplication of their own content. While you might assume that since it is your content, you can do whatever you want with it, this is not the case. Unless you are updating and refreshing an old post, you cannot reuse your old content.
Why would you want to do it anyway? Well, sometimes businesses discover new keywords that they must rank for. Rather than creating new content for it, they merely create additional pages or blogs with previous content with the only difference of including a new keyword in it.
Whether you are copying the hard work of someone else or reusing your own content when your old post is still up and running, search engines will penalize you.
3. Cloaking
Cloaking is yet another black hat SEO technique that is actively considered to be a violation of the Webmaster Guideline of Google.
What is it exactly?
Well, it involves showing a different piece of content to search engine and users. Black hat SEO providers use this tactic to rank their website for terms that are not relevant to their content and hence cannot be included in the pieces displayed to users. This is because if they do display it, it will come under keyword stuffing, and search engine bots will detect it as spam.
Therefore, as a way to avoid being penalized for the first black hat SEO technique discussed, websites use cloaking to dupe the algorithm and search engine bots.
Some examples include:
- Showing a page of images to site visitors while showing HTML text to search engine crawlers.
- Only showing high demanded keywords on the page when the user agent is a search engine.
Apart from being penalized when detected, cloaking backfires quite easily. User experience is at the heart of a modern search engine algorithm. Therefore, if your actual page is not satisfying the visitors of the included queries and they are leaving your site quickly, the algorithm will automatically lower your site rank.
4. Manipulative/Paid Links
Authentic link building is an excellent white hat SEO tactic. According to Google, backlinks are among the top three ranking factors. However, building links is not easy. In fact, according to Social Media Today, 94 percent of online content gets zero links!
This might explain why some people might try to cheat the system and get paid or manipulative links. According to the guidelines, search engines use backlinks as evidence of the credibility of a given website. In other words, if a quality website is linking back to you, it means that your website is credible as well.
Your links must be earned rather than paid for. Hence, manipulative links are considered to be a breach of trust. Make sure to avoid strategies like:
- Spamming comments of blogs for links
- Paying for links
- Excessively exchanging links
Apart from having the risk of your competitors outing you, now, algorithms are developed enough to detect unearned links on their own! So, stay away from this technique. It will cost you money and your rank.
5. Creation of a network of private blogs
Now, this is a tactic that is considerably recent and significantly more sophisticated than some of the other black hat SEO techniques on this list. In fact, unless you are aware that it is wrong, you might think that it is a white hat technique when someone tries to pitch it to you! This is what makes it truly dangerous.
This strategy revolves around creating independent private blogs or purchasing websites that have amassed a following. You then use it to publish content featuring your link in it. On the outside, it may seem that this is a way of link building.
While it may take Google some time to catch on to this hack, rest assured that it eventually will. This is because, as mentioned above, excessive linking from one website is considered to be suspicious – especially if your business is the only service that the said page is linking back to!
Even duping search engines via link building takes a lot of effort and time to show results. And such results are fleeting. Instead of wasting your energy on it, it is much better to try and built authentic links that are likely to yield consistent long-term results.
The consequences of using black hat SEO tactics
The repercussions of using black hat techniques for SEO can range from not having a given page indexed to being outright banned from the search engine.
The unethical practice can cost you your online reputation and credibility. And sometimes, businesses are unaware that the practices pitched to them are not allowed.
Therefore, regardless of what your role in your business is and whether or not you understand the world of SEO, it is imperative for you to conduct basic research about SEO before assigning an agency or a resource to it.
At the end of the day, it is only your business that will suffer the harsh consequences. In an attempt to save money, don’t place your trust in the wrong “professional.” And if you are knowingly trying to trick the search engine, know that the bot is too smart for you!
Ending Remarks
Steer clear of each of these five black hat SEO tactics if you wish to maintain your online integrity and reputation. Use the right techniques and watch as your online presence and ranking improves for the better.
Is there any other common Black Hat tactic you feel that we have missed out on? Do let us all know!
