What is Black Hat SEO | Dangerous Techniques for Website SEO

If we view Google as a city and webmasters and SEOs as its citizens, it is definitely necessary to set strict rules for operating in such a large city. Webmaster Guidelines is a section on Google’s site that specifies Google’s standards for identifying and penalizing spam sites. Black hat SEO is one of the wrong methods that causes Google to become suspicious of your activities over time and penalize your site.

Black hat SEO tricks seek to deceive search engines rather than solve users’ problems; that is, instead of fairly achieving high rankings in the results, they use unfair methods to get into top positions. To avoid the trap of black hat SEO, you should familiarize yourself with the sub-web of black hat SEO tricks at the beginning of your professional journey. Below, we will review the black SEO techniques section by section.

What is black hat SEO?

Black hat SEO is a set of actions taken in violation of search engine rules to increase a site’s ranking in search results. These unauthorized methods usually result in penalties and fines from search engines. Black hat SEO techniques include excessive keyword usage, cloaking, and the use of private link networks.

If you are new to the world of SEO, you should know that search engines like Google aim to provide the best results for the queries that users make of them. They want their users to have a great search experience and see results that are not spammy and that are useful to them. Google does this through automated or manual algorithms to detect and penalize sites that use black-hat SEO techniques.

Over time, Google’s algorithms have become much more sophisticated, which is why it no longer seems wise to resort to Black Hat SEO methods. On the contrary, white hat SEO methods are much more effective. White hat SEO is a set of actions that align more closely with search engine guidelines by producing high-quality content and providing a good user experience.

Difference between white hat SEO and black hat SEO

Black hat SEO goes against the rules of search engines. Therefore, it may completely remove your site from search results or the ranking you have earned during this time. White hat SEO methods are an ethical approach to SEO that focuses on producing quality content and creating a good user experience. This article explains the techniques involved in black hat SEO and why you should avoid them.

Black Hat Techniques in SEO

Hidden Links

If you intend to hide irrelevant links in the text from users, you should know that Google will notice and penalize you. Any link hidden in the text by tricks such as changing the text color, reducing the font size, or placing the link in images violates Google’s guidelines and is less likely to appear in good Google results.

Overused Anchor Text

Anchor text in SEO is an old but complex topic. Many people active in this field believe that anchor texts that match the source page’s content should be used. However, you can choose a variety of anchor texts that are still relevant to the destination page, and not just use one anchor text with a specific keyword. This method is one of the SEO tricks, and, of course, many novices use it in internal and external link building without realizing it.

Hidden Content

Hiding content is one of the black-hat SEO tricks. If you try to make content a background color and cover text with an image, or even change its font and size, you have used the technique of hidden content. In this method, the main keywords, LSI keywords, and related phrases are hidden from Google’s algorithms yet remain easily distinguishable from the main phrases.

Plagiarized or Duplicated Content

When you use the structure and paragraph structure of a content article from your site to produce content for another site on your site, you have started publishing duplicate content. However, using content that has a complete or similar version on other sites is called duplicate content. This technique leads to duplicate or copied content that confuses the audience and prevents them from recognizing valuable content. Therefore, take writing original, unique content seriously across all pages of the site and never resort to duplicate or copied content.

Keyword stuffing in the ALT tag

Keyword stuffing doesn’t just happen inside the text! Stuffing alt tags with your main keywords is one of the black-hat SEO methods that severely damages your site’s ranking. It’s always recommended to fill in the Alt tags of images as part of your on-page SEO, but that doesn’t mean you should use keyword stuffing in these tags.

Hacked Website

If competitors and their HTML code attack a site that has been tampered with, its security will be compromised, and it will lose valuable rankings in Google results. Displaying the warning “This site may be hacked” at the top of the site’s link description will cause visitors to lose trust and its position in Google to drop. Hacked site errors and malicious code in the site’s HTML can be identified in Google Analytics and addressed.

Automated content generation

Automated content generation is a black-hat SEO technique in which no human writer is involved; content is generated by robots and software programs on the web. At first glance, this is a method of blatant content copying and can be used to get feedback when robots access and target the content of newly established sites. Automated content generation can quickly meet your needs. Still, it does not add value to users and, over time, can erode Google’s trust in your site, potentially resulting in heavy penalties.

Doorway Pages

In the SEO profession, there are dozens of techniques to increase a site’s ranking, and doorway pages are among the most destructive black-hat SEO tricks. Doorway pages are collections of similar or multiple pages created by replacing keywords to target specific, diverse search queries, without regard for the real value of those words or their user experience, and without producing useful, functional content for users.

Excessive use of keywords

Keyword stuffing occurs when you fill your text with irrelevant keywords. It is used to manipulate and trick search engine algorithms into appearing higher in search results. Adding similar keywords and their derivatives to text without adding value to the audience will only create a poor user experience. It may even cause your page to appear and rank in irrelevant search results. Google explains keyword stuffing as follows:

• • A list of useless and meaningless phone numbers.
  • Long texts of city names or words that the page ranks for.
  • Repetition of the same words or phrases that seem excessive and unnatural.

In general, you should create value for your audience in the content you write. Simply writing related words together for SEO purposes is considered a black-hat SEO technique. Of course, you can check and see what your audience is searching for most before producing content. But overusing these keywords in your content is not a good idea. Instead, focus on producing content that is useful and valuable.

Cloaking Technique

Cloaking is the technique of showing one version of content to users and another to search engines. Sites often use this technique to allow content to rank for unrelated areas of the page. Spam sites, however, use this technique to hide their content from bots.

It’s okay to modify and adapt your site’s content for different user groups. For example, you might design your site to be smaller and more optimized for mobile viewing. For example, change your site’s language based on the country your audience is visiting from. Sites like Forbes or Inc. might even change the ads they show on a page based on the context. As long as you’re not changing the content to hide it from search engines, these examples are perfectly acceptable.

Since there are no hard-and-fast rules about what is acceptable, ask yourself: are the changes you are making beneficial to your users? If the answer is yes, then it is acceptable. You should also treat search engines like real users. To see what Google thinks of your site, you can use the Fetch as Google tool.

Sneaky redirects

In general, redirecting means sending a user to a different URL than the one they originally clicked on. Black hat SEO uses these redirects for a different purpose. Like the stealth we explained in the previous section, Black Hat SEO can redirect search engines to one page and other users to another page.

For example, a high-authority page would be redirected to an unrelated page address for search engines only to increase its ranking in Google results. A 301 redirect can transfer a large portion of the authority of one page to another. In other words, someone who uses black hat SEO techniques uses redirects to manipulate search results.

Redirects should only be used for the purpose for which they were created. When you are going to change the address of a domain or integrate two pieces of content on one page. JavaScript-based redirects are also acceptable in some special circumstances. For example, on LinkedIn, when you log in to your account, you see the full versions of other users’ profiles. Otherwise, you see the public version of the profiles. On the other hand, sneaky redirects violate the guidelines of search engines like Google and Yandex and should be avoided.

Using low-quality content

Creating low-quality content is one of the common black hat SEO practices that neither users nor Google like. Duplicate and duplicate content published on sites by bots or writers is a clear example of low-quality content. The Panda algorithm was created in 2011 to solve the problem of producing low-quality content. At that time, many sites that had copied their content from other sources were identified by this algorithm and suffered significant damage to their Google search rankings. Since then, Google has gained much greater power to identify low-quality and duplicate content.

Bait and switch technique

Another tactic we see in black hat SEO is the “bait and switch” technique. In this model, you produce content on a topic that you want to rank for. After the page finds a good position in the search results, you replace it with another piece of content. This action will result in a very unpleasant experience for the audience. Because users expect to come across the topic they searched for after clicking on the link to your site page.

Paid and malicious external links (Buy Backlinks)

Search engines like Google strictly prohibit the buying and selling of links. They state on their site that “any link created with the intent to manipulate or deceive the PageRank or ranking of sites on Google is against Google’s rules.” If you’re not sure which links are not acceptable, you can check the FTC’s guidelines.

It is best to avoid paying other sites to place links on them. Because Google will penalize both the buyer and seller sites as a result of this action. If you have purchased backlinks before reading this article, it is better to remove them as soon as possible. If you have access to the site’s Search Console, you can use the disavow links tool to turn off the links.

Misuse of structured data or rich snippets

Structured data, or rich snippets, allow you to specify how your content appears on Google’s search results page. This helps your content stand out from your competitors and be seen. Black hat SEO may try to deceive search engines by manipulating and providing false information in this section, for example, by fraudulently rating a piece of content 5 out of 5. We recommend that you avoid using these methods, as Google always encourages its users to report such sites so they can be penalized.

Spam comments on blogs

This method involves adding a link to your site in the comments section of other sites. Of course, this happens less often today because Google’s algorithms, in recent updates, can identify these comments and turn off these links. This means the links are published as nofollow, telling Google robots not to follow them. As a result, the authority of this page will not be transferred elsewhere.

If you own a site with a comment section, we recommend that you monitor comments carefully. Google penalizes pages with many spam comments and gradually removes them from search results.

Link Farms

A link farm is a site or a collection of sites that are created solely for the purpose of building backlinks. Each backlink is given to a site that wants to rank higher in Google. Link farms usually have low-quality content and a large number of links. These links usually contain the keyword that you want your site to rank for. Search engines like Google will easily identify these links and will prevent them from being used. That’s why it’s best to avoid them.

Using low-quality and spammy private blog networks for external link building (PBN)

Private Blog Networks, or PBNs for short, are collections of reputable sites created solely for building external links. These networks work similarly to link farms to increase a site’s backlink count. The difference is that each PBN site points to only one site, and they do not link to each other. See the example below:

In black-hat SEO, a private network is created by purchasing several related, authoritative domains. They then place content similar to their own website content on them and add links from their site. In this situation, the site owner hopes that search engines will not notice their control over this network and that they will rank well in Google results.

One thing to keep in mind is that search engines are getting smarter about identifying PBN backlinks and will penalize them if they do. Instead of spending time building fake sites, focus on getting quality content creation services. Publishing valuable content regularly can boost your site’s credibility and encourage others to link to it.

Examples of Black Hat SEO

• Groupon’s “Change Selling” Scam

Groupon was accused of using the bait-and-switch technique we explained earlier. The travel company would advertise one of its special sales promotions on Google long after it expired. Users clicked the special offer link, but there was no discount because the content had been removed.

• JC Penney Black Hat Links

J.C. Penney ranked highest in Google results for a wide range of keywords, from jeans to home decor. This extraordinary performance in search results, which coincided with the holiday season, was thanks to black-hat SEO link-building techniques that had slipped under Google’s radar. Google eventually found the company’s actions to violate its guidelines and lowered the company’s site’s ranking by 70 places for a keyword like “living room furniture.”

• Spam created by sprint users

In 2013, a user named Redlag x3 posted on Google’s Webmaster Forums explaining that Sprint had issued a warning about user-generated spam. Google responded that much of the spam had been removed, but that the site needed to be more proactive in cleaning it up.

• Forbes sales links

A person who appeared to work for Forbes posted a question on Google’s webmaster forum about a warning they had received. The warning stated that unnatural links should be removed from the site’s content. According to Google’s response, the site had been buying paid backlinks and was eventually penalized.

What is the difference between Black SEO and Negative SEO?

So far in this article, we have reviewed black hat SEO tricks and explained each one in detail; however, negative SEO refers to a set of actions in which webmasters use black hat SEO techniques to cause Google to penalize a competitor’s site and severely reduce its ranking in Google results. There are many tricks in negative SEO to trouble a competitor’s site; raising a site similar to a competitor’s site and reporting it to Google, creating backlinks from unethical sites, and removing good and effective backlinks from a competitor’s site are among the black hat SEO methods that are sometimes used to discredit a competitor’s site in the eyes of Google.

Why should you avoid black hat SEO?

Black hat SEO, while not illegal, violates Google’s guidelines. In fact, these practices are against the rules, and you will be heavily fined if you use them. Specifically, a Google penalty can cause your ranking to drop on the Google results page or even remove it from the results page entirely. Search engines are getting better at detecting black-hat SEO tactics. You may even have some success using these techniques for a while. But you should know that sooner or later, you will be detected by Google’s algorithms.

How to avoid black hat SEO?

See Google bots through the user’s eyes. Avoid hiding and tricking them with unauthorized redirects. Always try to focus on answering users’ questions and creating a good user experience. Produce high-quality content and avoid excessive keyword repetition. Do not copy other people’s content by changing or moving words. Follow the rules when using rich snippets. Make sure the information you show is real and accurate. Do not buy and sell bulk, low-quality links. Of course, exchanging money alone does not make this black-hat SEO. Offering free products in exchange for links is also prohibited.

Don’t create a private blog network to get links. Think about the content you provide to your users. Stay up to date and avoid black-hat techniques whenever possible. Never try to bypass Google’s algorithms to avoid penalties. Instead, go for white-hat SEO techniques and always follow search engines’ rules and regulations. Don’t forget that Google’s algorithms are updated regularly, and you need to keep your SEO knowledge and information up to date to be successful.

Conclusion

While black hat SEO can produce positive results for page rankings in the short term, in the long run, what you gain is not sustainable and will eventually destroy your chances of appearing in Google’s top results. Instead, focus on implementing a white-hat SEO strategy that delivers valuable SEO results and credibility for your brand.