Black Hat SEO – Is It Really Worth?
As we all know that there exist both ways (either good or bad) to perform any task. Similarly, Search Engine Optimization can be done in number of ways. The right and wrong way of doing SEO are respectively known as White Hat SEO & Black Hat SEO. However, the practice that comes under the Black Hat SEO is not appreciated by Google. Now, the question arises, “What are Black Hat SEO Strategies” and “What are their outcomes?”. In this article, we will guide you about all the aspects of Black Hat SEO in a detailed manner.
While doing SEO, you must ask a question to yourself – “Are these SEO techniques will affect my audience or I am just using these for the machine?” And even, without considering the use of the audience, if the site ranking is in the state of enhancement, it seems to be Black hat SEO. Black Hat SEO is a practice followed to get a higher ranking of your site in SERPs by not following the search engine guidelines and who expects a quick return on their site, rather than a long-term investment prefers to use Black Hat SEO. Before discussing the effect and outcomes of the Black Hat SEO, let us know about the major Black Hat SEO techniques:
1. Keyword Stuffing: Keyword stuffing is the practice of embedding your content with unnecessary keywords just to make the site ranking higher on SERPs. However, the page will rank for those irrelevant keywords, it will be quite annoying for the users.
2. Doorway Pages: These are those unwanted pages which act a mediator between the actual content and the audience. These are created to rank highly for specific keywords which has nothing to do with the users.
3. Cloaking: It involves the practice of showing different content to users and search engines. For example, you search for a keyword “mathematics” and visit the related website after search, and it redirects to you at completely different content.
4. Content Automation: It refers to the process of generating content without involving humans i.e., with the use of machines. The goal behind is to create the content which is more compatible with the search engine and not focusing on the user’s need.
5. Hidden Texts/Links: These are the deceptive forms of links that are almost invisible to the users. The web pages having these hidden links embedded on it looks similar to the normal pages till then these hidden links are not assessed. It can be done by following ways:
- Using same text color as of the background
- Resizing the font size Zero
- Hiding behind the image
- Placing the link on small characters like – comma, colon, etc.
6. Duplicate Content: The duplicity of content is one of the most used Black Hat SEO techniques. Even Google has updated its algorithm to analyze if the content in your site is original or stolen from any other site. Google always prefer the original content.
7. Sneaky Redirects: It is the process of redirecting the users to a different URL, not the one which they requested. However, there are good reasons too to redirect the user from one URL to another but mostly it is used for some malicious activities.
8. Paid Links: Yes, Paid Links are also falling under the Black Hat SEO category as if you are trying to enhance your domain authority by selling links, Google will de-index your site.
There are many other Black Hat SEO techniques as well which works against the guidelines of Google. So, the point is if these techniques do not follow the search engine guidelines, then why are they being used? Perhaps, the reason is as it provides some short-term success. But you keep it remember that Google is becoming very strict with its policies and to violate these guidelines by doing Black Hat SEO can get your site penalized or the site could be de-indexed permanently. Some of the SEO practices you should do to avoid Black Hat SEO are listed below:
- Always make the user experience your priority while doing SEO
- Do not try to trick the search engine by cloaking, doorway pages, etc.
- Provide original content and avoid redundancy
- Stay up to date with the Search Engine Guidelines
You must have heard about a popular saying, “When in Rome do as the Romans do.” It perfectly fits here as if you want to be in the good books of search engines you must have to work according to their policies. So if you don’t want that your next search looks like – “How to fix the website blocked by Google?”, you must avoid doing Black Hat SEO.
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