Surely you have heard on more than one occasion the term black hat SEO or, as it is officially known, Black Hat SEO techniques. However, these types of terms are not always clear to users or entrepreneurs who are not digital marketing professionals. That is why we want to talk to you today about this topic, since applying it could have serious consequences for your website, making it disappear from search results. For this reason, we will define what is Black Hat SEO? And what the most used techniques are.
In our previous post about SEO guide for beginners, we tried to explain to you in detail the concept of “SEO” and the techniques used for ON-Page SEO and OFF-Page SEO.
Today we will explain to you another classification that we can do in SEO optimization and that is based on whether or not we follow the “recommendations” that the search engine suggests. Thus, we can differentiate between White Hat SEO and Black Hat SEO.
- White Hat SEO: are all the techniques and tactics that seek to improve website ranking and visibility by following Google’s algorithms. It is an ethical SEO that meets the guidelines of the search engine.
- Black Hat SEO: are all those actions that also seek to improve website ranking and visibility but are not ethically correct or contradict the search engine guidelines and try to deceive the algorithm.
The advantage of using Black Hat SEO is that it can provide short-term website ranking but in return, the search engine can penalize these actions at any time and, consequently, see the rank of keywords achieved abruptly and without prior notice worsen. It is, in short, a very risky strategy and no Professional will recommend it.
Some Black Hat SEO techniques are:
Cloaking:
Cloaking is a Black Hat SEO technique in which differentiated content is created for search engines and users. In this technique, People create more optimize and SEO friendly content for search engine robots and create another copy of the content for users that are easier to read and understandable.
Spinning Content:
When you talk about this Black Hat SEO technique you could say that it is to make a copy and paste of elegant content. In other words, we all know that duplicate content has been penalized by search engines for years. But what about those websites that reproduce content from others make basic changes for synonyms and similar contexts so that the text is different in form and identical in the background? This is also penalized and although the name it receives is not too well known, spinning is one of the most persecuted black hat SEO techniques and that search engines are fighting against.
Keyword Stuffing:
This Black hat SEO technique tries to excessively repeat the keyword within the text that you want to optimize and rank your website. It is therefore based on an over-optimization that Google and other search engines penalize quite frequently. The search engine realizes that the keyword is not entered naturally, and considers that the content in this case does not add value to the readers. Remember that the density of a keyword in the content of a web page (that is, the number of times the word appears in the text with respect to the total number of words) is between 2% and 3%.
Hidden text:
This is a Black Hat SEO technique that is based on publishing the text of the same color as the background of the page, in such a way that it is not displayed, with a size smaller than the rest of the text in such a way that it is not perceived by the reader. In this text, what is done is include the keyword so that it has more density but it is not visible to the readers unless Google analyzes it.
Negative SEO towards competition:
Another of the techniques that are used and are within Black Hat SEO is to do Negative SEO to the competitor’s websites, in such a way that publications are made speaking ill of them, Spam is sent to them or a massive sending of bad quality backlinks is made. The objective of this is that the competitors lose search engine ranking in the medium-long term.
Create automatic Websites:
It is about creating an auto-posting website that clone content from other websites on a certain topic, we also called it auto blogging, and it is something that continues today. Google is increasingly improving its algorithm to detect these types of Black Hat SEO tactics so that they can be reported and disappear from SERPs (Search engine results page).
Tools to leave automatic comments:
Another widely used Black Hat SEO technique is to use platforms or tools that automatically generate comments within WordPress on the web. To prevent this from happening, you must install a plugin that prevents you from receiving email notifications referring to certain comments in another language within a website.
How to avoid Black Hat SEO on your website?
Analyze redirects:
This is a point that we have to keep in mind if we want Black Hat SEO not to appear suddenly on our website. You have to be very clear about the content you link to on your website, since if they are very old they may no longer exist or you may no longer be interested in them.
You have to be very attentive to modify it and buy that they are always of quality. This is the same with the redirects that we do within our own page, sometimes there are small errors or mistakes that if you do not analyze them go unnoticed. Those who do it with the assurance that Google will not penalize you for them.
Optimize ON-Page SEO month by month:
This is another way to prevent negative ranking from affecting your website. It is important that the On-page SEO of your website is worked constantly, daily or monthly so that Google sees that you dedicate time to your site and that it is important for you to reach the top positions.
Control incoming links:
External links are very interesting as long as they are of quality and are going to have a role that favors your website and brings you something positive, otherwise, you do not have to allow them.
Analyze your website in-depth on a regular basis:
Today, there are many tools that will allow you to do a detailed analysis of the state of the website and where you can see the evolution that you are having over time.
Thanks to tools such as Semrush, Google Search Console or Google Analytics, you will be able to see who has entered your website, how long it has been, what is the traffic you currently have, among many other things.
You will be able to know all the activity that happens within your page, in such a way that if you see something strange or unusual you will be able to detect it and put a solution on it. With this, you can prevent Black Hat SEO from affecting you at some point.
Analyze sponsored content:
Sponsored content is always well received on your website, but you have to take into account several points and therefore you should review any content before publishing it, so that you make sure that it is original content and not a copy and paste of anywhere and also, that this content is going to add value to your customers or followers.
If any of these points is not met, it is best that you do not publish that content, since it will harm you negatively, because it will not position itself well and will not add value to your blog. Think carefully before posting anything you have done yourself!
Conclusion:
Well, you already know a little more about Black Hat SEO techniques and how to avoid it on your website. If you are looking for an SEO positioning specialist to help you keep your website optimized and that you can position yourself in search engines without any problem, at Techie champs we offer you a quality service at the best price. Contact us!