Surely everyone knows that SEO is operated based on specific rules. However, many SEOs try to break them down to gain an advantage faster. These are Black Hat SEO, who turn to shortcuts and strategies rejected by Google. They are the opposite of White Hat SEO, who advertise high-value content and follow the principles set by search engines. The Black Hat SEO strategy can really bring some success, but most of it only exists for a short time. And eventually, they will be punished by Google penalties. Here are the things to keep in mind when using the Black Hat SEO strategy.
How is Black Hat SEO technique killing your website?
Table of Contents:
- What is Google Penalties?
- Black Hat SEO techniques to avoid
o Link-Building
o Link-Buying
o Reciprocal Linking Schemes
o Footer Links
o Hiding Links
o Comment Spam
o Overuse of Anchor text
o Content
Keyword stuffing
Duplicate content
Hidden content
o Website Security
- Conclude
What is Google Penalties?
If you use the Black Hat method to increase your rankings in search results, you will encounter Google Penalties as a penalty by Google that causes you to lose your current ranking in search engines, which can be very damaging. Serious consequences for your site, especially if you rely heavily on organic traffic from Google.
There are two important Google updates worth mentioning when it comes to penalties: Penguin update and Panda update.
The Penguin update was introduced in 2012 with the goal of identifying sites that are spamming Google’s search results by retrieving links generated solely for the purpose of boosting rankings. The Panda update prevents websites with low quality content from getting top positions in search results.
Both updates penalized sites that didn’t perform SEO properly, reduced their position in search results, or even removed them from search results altogether.
Google’s algorithms are constantly being updated to remove SEO pages that do not comply with the rules and adjust search results so they can best serve the interests of Google users.
Therefore, it is important to keep track of changes that occur in the field of SEO and avoid Black Hat SEO techniques that may kill your site.
Black Hat SEO techniques you should avoid
To avoid any Google penalties and keep your organic traffic, take a look at the most malicious Black Hat SEO strategies:
Link-Building
One of the ways for Google to rank websites is through links. In the past, the number of links was very important, but now link quality has become a more important ranking signal. Breaking the SEO link building rules will hit your site with Penguin penalties, so here’s what you should not do when it comes to links:
Link-Buying
If Google takes links seriously, you might think that the easiest way to get links is to buy them from websites that have high domain management rights. While this may seem logical, it goes against Google’s guidelines.
Google tracks links can be purchased or created by yourself, so you cannot avoid these rules and once discovered, you will definitely be subject to penalties from Google.
Reciprocal Linking Schemes
For similar reasons Link-Buying is considered a way to increase rankings, exchange links that occur between unrelated sites are put together in the same category.
Relevant links are used sparingly and collectively are the only links you should use if you don’t want to risk being penalized.
Footer Links
Footer Links is a Black Hat SEO strategy designed with the idea to get a backlink from every page of the site, since all pages will contain footers.
However, the general rule is that if these Footer Links are only included for SEO purposes but don’t serve any value to the reader, then we face the same penalty as with any building strategy. other links.
Hiding Links
Hiding Links is another deceptive SEO technique that must be avoided because Google can easily determine whether a website has hidden links or hidden text.
The problem with hidden links or text is that they display different content to visitors than crawlers, a serious SEO offense that is not acceptable to Google.
Comment Spam
Sites that allow uncensored comments are often attacked with spam comments with links pointing to completely unrelated sites.
People who post these links think this is an easy way to get some SEO interaction for their site. But they are wrong for two reasons: First, these are spamming practices that Google is simply the author. And secondly, they are often irrelevant to the context and absolutely not valuable to readers.
These comment spam may also take the form of malicious backlinks, intended to compromise the authority of the site. Therefore, you should check for any suspicious sites that link to your site and delete them for your site or use the Google Search Console Disavow Tool to ask Google to ignore them.
Overuse of Anchor text
Anchor text is a piece of text on the web that contains links to your web pages or to a website other than your own.
However, if you use the same anchor text or you are using too much anchor text, you will face penalties, as Google will choose the fact that you are trying to rank for specific search terms.
Content
Content is another SEO motivation, meaning it is also vulnerable to Black Hat SEO techniques.
When it comes to content, keyword stuffing, duplicate content and hidden content are the three most popular Black Hat SEO techniques that will kill your website.
Keyword stuffing
When you use the keyword, you are trying to rank on a page repeatedly will lead to over-optimization, which means that you are trying to impress search engines instead of providing answers for the query of the reader.
Stuffing keywords are used to work as a way to go ahead in search engines, but today Google has many methods to determine what your content is and whether it is valuable to your readers.
Duplicate content
Creating original content is time-consuming and involves researching, giving good ideas and finding ways to serve that content in an engaging and interesting way for your readers. But this is something that many SEOs do not want to do, so they copy content from other websites.
But copying content from other websites is a sure way to get penalties from Google. Google favors original content and does not rank for content that goes copied.
Content is hidden
Hidden content is somewhat related to keyword stuffing in that it serves the same purpose: Add relevant keywords and phrases to the content in the hope of increasing rankings.
Hidden content is often invisible to visitors because it is often published in the same color as the background, but is highly visible to search engines.
Hidden content is a blatant way to manipulate search engine results, which is one of the reasons why Google dislikes finding hidden text or links on your site. Another reason is that hidden content is not conducive to a good user experience, because your site displays something different from visitors.
Website Security
Website Security is another important parameter that Google prioritizes when ranking websites.
If your site is not secure, Google will be cautious when distributing it in search results, so unsecured sites are ranked worse than other websites due to unsafe websites. It is vulnerable to attacks and injections with malicious code from hackers or others to weaken a website’s power.
If Google detects that your site has been hacked or injected with malicious code, then Google will send a notice through Google Analytics. For penalties for not handling website security, Google may block your site from search results, which may display a notice to visitors that your site may have been compromised. Your attack or website may lose position as a result of search.
Conclusion
At first you may find some attractive Black Hat SEO strategies, but upon closer inspection you will realize that they are just killing your site. There is a reason why Google has guidelines that must be followed, so if you are looking to rank well in search engines, you will have to follow the same rules as everyone else.