Black Hat SEO: Not Welcomed by Google!

Black hat SEO is a term that includes misleading and deceptive SEO techniques and tactics that only focus on ranking in search engines. It is also known as spam SEO or spamdexing. In most cases, content prepared to deceive the user also violates the rules determined by search engines.

Although these techniques are still preferred today, most of these techniques have no efficient SEO benefits. It will get you to the top of the search engines for only a short period of time. However, it is a way of working that causes permanent problems for your website once it is noticed by search engines. While you gain in the short term, it is harmful to the website in the long term and leads to permanent penalties.

Types of Black Hat SEO

Black Hat SEO, just like normal SEO, has two different types: on-page and off-site. On-page Black Hat SEO includes on-page studies, while off-page Black Hat SEO includes tricks like getting spam links from external sources.

On-page Black Hat SEO usually starts with adding too many and irrelevant internal links on the main page. Like internal links, other links opening up a new page with a different domain usually contains irrelevant information. Moreover, they consist of meaningless URL structures and code strings. On the other hand, off-page Black Hat SEO includes techniques that will help a website acquire thousands of links through paid third sources to the original site. Besides, these redirected pages mostly have contents that will be penalized.

Advantages of Black Hat SEO

With less effort, you can have a leading position on SEO rankings in a very short time through tactics such as keyword manipulation. Thus, you can guarantee high profits in the short term via your website. In addition, you can set up a backlink network more conveniently and easily through websites serving only for backlink-spamming. As a result of all this, your domain awareness will increase quickly.

But is this a good idea for your brand? We don’t think so. Because with the first update, it’s easy for Google to realize this trick.

See More: 2021 SEO Updates

Disadvantages of Black Hat SEO

You need to make a separate budget for the backlink apps/ websites we mentioned. Moreover, the gains you make using black hat SEO techniques are all temporary. Besides, you will inevitably be penalized by search engines as you will receive many complaints about reasons such as spam, irrelevant content, and irrelevant link-building. As a result of all these, the domain awareness you have gained for a short time will fade away, as if you have done nothing. Therefore, as Screpy experts, we will recommend you not to apply Black Hat SEO tactics on your website as much as possible.

See More: Popular SEO tips

Black Hat SEO Techniques Which Have White Hat SEO Alternatives Instead

This section of the article will be covering Black Hat SEO techniques that should be avoided in 2021 and what you can do instead.

Buying Links From 3rd Sources

You can acquire backlinks by paying money to have external sources link your website. While it may seem logical and legal, doing so requires a large budget level and is the same as ignoring Google’s Webmaster Guidelines. Well, because you violated Google’s rules, it is inevitable that you will be penalized as soon as Google notices what you are up to.

Besides, remember that significant investments are made in artificial intelligence-based algorithms, especially by giant companies such as Google, and these artificial intelligence bots are getting better day by day. Therefore, it is highly possible that you will be noticed by Google bots because of the links you get by saying, “it will not be noticed even if I do it,” and that you will lose ranking as a result.

Instead of Buying Links From 3rd Sources

What you need to do is take the time and effort to produce link-worthy content and then set up a link-building network. By contacting people, you can say that you have the same content that makes up for the shortcomings of what they post. So, when they link to your domain, the two content will complement each other like a puzzle and increase the user experience.

It looks tough, but it’s cheaper, healthier, and less likely to be penalized than Black Hat SEO. It is also something that will directly increase your organic traffic.

Invisible/ Hidden Text

Another technique is used – albeit slightly – and will directly harm your site. Some website owners allow words to be written in the same color as the site’s background color while preparing content. Or sometimes, this manipulation technique is tried by hiding behind images or setting the font to 0. This allows search bots to index them while users cannot see these words. However, the invisible text is considered a violation of Google’s Webmaster Guidelines since it is intended to deceive Google bots. As a result, these invisible/ hidden texts, which are flagged to deceive Google, harm your website ranking.

Instead of Invisible/ Hidden Text

Remember that not all hidden text is intended to deceive. In some cases, it can improve the user experience in an SEO-optimized way and even provide you SEO rankings. As Screpy experts, we have listed three different SEO-friendly hidden text methods:

• Benefit from alt text attributes that can be used for images.
• User reviews, comments, or anything can be truncated to a significant amount of characters, something like “shortened to around 50 characters to be  hidden by “Read more” click.”
• You can use them in pop-up texts and navigation menus since Google initially examines the core body content.

Keyword and Content Manipulation

Keyword manipulation is the name given to keyword overuse and necessary/unnecessary keyword stuffing in the content so that search engines may rank the page higher. Any website with a high keyword density aims to achieve high rankings by deceiving search engine bots with keyword manipulation.

Content manipulation, on the other hand, just like keyword manipulation, is publishing the same content on more than one page of a website in order to be more indexed by search engines.

However, both of these Black Hat SEO tactics are against Google’s Webmaster Guidelines and will seriously damage your rankings when Google identifies.

Instead of Keyword and Content Manipulation

You can conduct a keyword optimization process to ensure your pages looks healthy according to search engines. For example, you can perform keyword optimization in the best way with our Screpy tool. Also, it’s better for your Google rankings to share original and read-worthy content, even less frequently, than sharing the same content on different pages.

Negative SEO

Negative SEO includes a series of practices that try to sabotage a competitive website in some way, negatively affecting its ranking in search engine results pages and reducing its performance. It is very unlikely that a negative SEO practice ends up as planned. Moreover, it is perhaps one of the worst Blackhat SEO techniques. It is unethical and can have serious consequences such as paying compensation or imprisonment. On top of that, even if your sabotage works, your competitor will rise from the ashes and still manage to outrun you.

Instead of Negative SEO

Practicing a practice like Negative SEO means recognizing that your content is worse than the other side. For this reason, you need to realize that what you really need to do is not attack the other side but improve yourself. Rest assured, following White Hat SEO techniques is much simpler and more reliable than doing negative SEO.

As Screpy experts, we have listed the things you need to do to produce higher quality and SEO-friendly content.

• Identify your target audience and produce content that they will like to consume. It can be a blog post, product page, promotion page, whatever they will be engaged, like, and interact with.
• Likewise, use keywords that will appeal to your target audience.
• Your content should be up-to-date-knowledge-based.
• Your content should be reliable-knowledge-based.
• Increase your page speed by optimizing.

Social Media Spam Posts

As another Black Hat SEO technique, website owners can post misleading spam posts on social media platforms. Usually, these shares are posted in advertising or different ways, in a way that completely deceives the user. Remember that even if you experience an instant increase in the number of users, this will result in much negative feedback and – worse – reporting. Naturally, the declining user experience will seriously reduce your SEO ranking.

Instead of Social Media Spam Posts

First of all, we want to remind you that quality is over quantity. Google and all search engines are concern with how satisfied the users are while exploring your website. With that in mind, posting a few reliable and SEO-friendly content will get you healthy and consistent traffic, rather than just posting 50 different social media spam posts per day.

Black Hat SEO Results

If you use Black Hat SEO techniques we have mentioned above, it is very likely that you will be penalized by Google. These penalties can be applied to your website manually or automatically. However, either way, it will hurt you and negatively affect your business.

Google Penalties

Google regularly checks the websites it serves people on search results pages to confirm that they act according to rules to keep user experience stable. As a result of the controls, if Google algorithms or employees detect a website with content or structure that mislead both the user and Google bots, the website gets penalized automatically or manually.

Automatic Penalties

They are penalties that are fully automated by Google algorithms. Taking the automatic penalty can hurt your business more than the manual penalty. Even if you readjust your website and everything in line with SEO rules, you may remain penalized until your page is indexed by bots again.

Manual Penalties

They are manual penalties applied by Google employees. Penalty status is sent to you as a message via Search Console. Removing the manual penalty is slightly easier than making things right after the automatic penalty. However, you need to notify Google once you purify your website from previous misleading content.

Ranking Decline

Regardless of how seriously you violated the SEO rules, you may need to say goodbye to the top results on the SERP page after your rule violation is detected. Sometimes you may lose a few rankings, while you can become a website page shown on the 2nd and 3rd pages.

Entering the Google Blacklist

Blacklisted websites are blocked in the Google index. Examples of these websites are those that have trojan or spam. Once you are blacklisted by Google, you will not be displayed in any Google search results until you back out.

Reasons to Choose White Hat SEO Over Black Hat SEO

We have listed three reasons why you should choose the light path instead of the dark path.

1. Black Hat SEO is more costly than White Hat SEO.

While many people think that Black hat SEO costs less than the white hat, as Screpy experts, we have to say that the answer is NO. Since AI technology is being developed and improved day by day, Google algorithms have a more comprehensive and accurate approach towards websites than before. This means that old black hat techniques cannot surpass reinforced Google doors. Thus, you have to apply more expensive and risky dark-path tactics, which ends up higher cost.

• While White Hat SEO is a safe port, Black Hat SEO is risky.

Once upon a time, Black Hat SEO techniques were tolerable by Google. However, the tide has turned. Now, websites benefiting from these black hat tactics are at great risk or have already been penalized. Rest assured that getting your website penalized by Google is one of the worst things that can happen to a website.

• Compared to White Hat SEO, Black Hat SEO is complex and challenging.

For Black Hat SEO, you need to have the technical knowledge to find the system’s vulnerabilities. However, having technical knowledge alone is not enough. Then, you have to determine the techniques necessary to take advantage of these vulnerabilities and act accordingly. Which, instead of going with White Hat SEO, this path is quite difficult to roam along.

 Now, we will answer the frequently asked questions about Black Hat SEO.

FAQ

Conclusion: Black Hat SEO

Black hat SEO is an SEO term based on the idea of exploiting or manipulating rules set by search engines. Websites that continue their lives with black hats ignore ethical rules and people and get high rankings while misleading users and deceiving search engine bots. However, the high ranking you will get and all the traffic you acquire on your website by following the dark path will be short-term. Instead, what awaits you will be a-penalized-website in the long run and a website that is not listed by search engines in search results.

Black hat SEO consists of SEO tactics that will allow you to gain in the short term but then cause you to lose more than you gain.