12 Black Hat SEO Techniques to avoid

Bloggers use different techniques and tools to increase search engine rankings and traffic of their blogs without knowing whether they are using white hat or black hat SEO techniques. This SEO practice was used a couple of years ago and even now, although many of the blogs get ranked higher as soon as Google updated their algorithms, the blogs get penalized.

You know how it is hard to recover from Google Penalty…

So Let’s move further and aim not to repeat these black hat SEO techniques further, so that our blog may not penalize and become a bright star in the blogging world.

black hat seo techniquesBefore discussing the topic first recall what is SEO and what are the different types of SEO used nowadays.

What is SEO:

SEO stands for search engine optimization. SEO aims to rank your blog or web pages higher in search engines, especially Google and Yahoo/Bing. The main purpose is to get organic traffic and turn this into passive income or marketing. There are two types of SEO i.e on page SEO and off page SEO and also two types of SEO techniques.

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Types of SEO techniques:

There are two main types of SEO techniques:

People may also ask a question that what is the difference between White hat SEO and Black hat SEO techniques…?

White hat SEO:

white hat SEO is a type of natural SEO, involves no shortcut, spamming or thin content. It will not cheat the users and especially the search engines. the blogger provides users quality, rich and original content that is accurate and relevant to user desire and search. Google loves this kind of SEO and will increase the search engine rankings of that blog or page.

Remember one thing that doing white hat SEO is not so simple because you have to be consistent and natural, you never cheat Google.

Black hat SEO:

As by name black hat SEO involves all unnatural and shortcut ways including tools to increase search engine rankings. But this type of SEO although improving SEO rankings in a short period but it will not consistent and soon or later (when Google noticed or introduce any algorithm) this will not only drop but may also lose its previous rankings.

Some webmaster introduced and new middle type SEO and is Brown hat SEO, not black but also not completely white. So

12 Black Hat SEO Techniques that may harm search engine rankings of your blog:

So here is the black hat SEO checklist.

  • keyword stacking or keyword stuffing
  • cloaking
  • duplicate content or low-quality content
  • link exchange
  • buying links
  • hidden text
  • links farms
  • writing for search engines
  • over-optimization
  • blog  commenting spam
  • URL Hijacking
  • social networking spam

Now let’s move further and study these black hat SEO techniques one by one in detail.

BLACK HAT SEO TECHNIQUES CHART

1-Keyword Stacking or Keyword Stuffing: keyword stacking or keyword stuffing is SEO techniques in which the writer repeats the keyword again and again after few lines just to increase its search engine visibility and keyword density. Although this type of technique worked a couple of years back after the introduction of Google Panda and Penguin it is strictly prohibited by Google. So this technique should be avoided and should use the focus keyword wisely not for search engines but the readers.

2- Cloaking: this black SEO involves the content different for the search engines and different for the visitors. For example, the title and permalink (post or article link) show different words while when a visitor loads the page he will see different content not relevant to the title or permalink. The main aim of this kind of SEO is to increase traffic. But remember one thing this method may bring the visitors (for a while) but may not turn them into loyal readers. So stop cheating search engines and be natural.

see what Matt Cuts say about cloaking

3-Duplicate content or Low-quality Content: duplicate content means to copy content from other blogs and use it on your own with or without permission, in both cases the link juice and ranking factor will support the first blog or website and not yours, so stop copying and use your original content.

While Low-quality content means irrelevant, unnecessary and non-beneficial content especially for the reader. This type of black hat SEO technique will produce just garbage so avoid or rewrite them to make them original. Google loves original content and tries to write some lengthy and LSI keyword posts after a couple of weeks or days.

4-Link Exchange: in this SEO technique the two blog owner exchange links with each other, although this technique worked well in past and have increased ranking factor in a short period, but not worked for a long time and soon Google detected it as a spammy activity. So it should be avoided now instead of that we should focus on guest posting on a relevant and quality website that may bring inbound links to increase search engine rankings.

5-Buying Links: Links are the major rankings factor for a blog. While doing SEO, when a blogger gets handsome traffic he used paid links to his website just for some pennies or cents, these links are mostly from the spammy website or irrelevant website. So this activity annoys Google and he will punish that website and drop its rankings. So try to use as minimum paid links or advertisement as you can, always follow Google Adsense policy and also try to use minimum ads above the fold.

6- Hidden Text: Putting illegal text on the page (especially at the bottom), use some hidden text links or use the link color as of page background color falls in hidden text activity. Google hates this kind of cheat. Because a user may not see it but the Google crawlers and bots can detect it and may consider your website hacked or secured. There may be a possibility that you are unaware of such a text, so be sure to scan your website source code to avoid such a penalty.

7-Link Farms: A website or a group of websites that exist and serve for the sole purpose of increasing the link popularity of another site through link exchanges are called Link farms. Google loves the website with high Google Page Rank (Google PR) and it depends upon inbound links. So users got links from many un-natural and irrelevant websites and hence dropped their website Rankings. So avoid these links and try to remove them as soon as possible otherwise Google Penguin and other Google Updates may hit so avoid this kind of black hat SEO technique.

8-Writing For Search Engines: Google is smart, you can never be smarter than it. So while writing always write for the readers, not for the search engines. Writers used copied or thin content or use some automatic SEO tools to spin these articles or may take help with some black hat SEO forums. But Google and other search engines will soon detect and deindexed them. So try not to waste time in writing such content and provide original, quality and useful content not for the search engines but only for the readers, because when a reader satisfy the Google will automatically take it plus for your website rankings.

Don’t Miss: 6 Steps to Convert your visitors into Loyal Blog Readers

9-Over-Optimization: Working with the website SEO naturally can increase search engine visibility of your website, but some webmasters over-optimize to get success in a short period, so don’t think to over-optimize it.

10-Blog Commenting spam: Although do blog commenting on the relevant and quality website is good to increase inbound links and hence rankings, but using it unnaturally i.e by using different automatic blog commenting software on high-ranking websites, or even by leaving a short or irrelevant comment just to get a backlink, may become a negative point for the website so be natural even in blog commenting.

Must Read: SEO checklist to make blog search engine friendly

11- URL hijacking: Register a domain name that is misspelled of a popular domain just to misguide the readers or visitors is fall in URL hijacking. For example, a website exists with a .com domain and another user registers it as .org or .net or any other extension. To avoid this kind of SEO activity and reproduce the original domain name by searching at Google.

12-Social Networking Spam: social networking website is the easiest and common source to get traffic to a website. It is good to use it for that purpose, but people use it unwisely, just to paste a link again and again or encourage visitors with some attractive sentences. So be natural and don’t be over smart and get traffic from social networking websites naturally.

Conclusion:  While doing SEO don’t use the above black hat SEO techniques, instead of that be natural, consistent and passive. Don’t use any unethical ways or shortcuts to increase search engine rankings or traffic. Just keep in mind that Google is smarter than you and you can never cheat it.

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