18 Risky Black Hat SEO Techniques to Avoid In 2023 | Blackhat forum

Many people believed that search engine optimization (SEO) was a method of manipulating search engine algorithms to rank websites higher about a decade ago. Cheating the algorithm to get ahead in rankings is referred to as black hat SEO.

Many marketers used black hat SEO to get their websites to rank higher. However, thanks to advancements in Google’s algorithms, the landscape has shifted dramatically. Search engines have refined and advanced their assessment factors to the point where unethical black hat SEO techniques can cause more harm than good to websites.

Instead of using shady black hat techniques to rank your website higher, you should strive to use SEO in a sustainable manner so that search engines do not flag your website as fraudulent.

What is Black Hat SEO?

Black Hat SEO is a set of unethical practices used to rank higher in Google search results. These techniques are known as black hats because they violate Google’s search engine guidelines. Keyword stuffing, cloaking, paid links, doorway pages, hidden content, and duplicate content are examples of commonly used SEO techniques. Let us go over each one in detail.

Black Hat SEO vs. White Hat SEO

Black hat SEO methods directly contradict the various guidelines established by search engines. Manipulation of these guidelines and cheating your way to the top can result in search engine penalties. Worse, you may be completely removed from search results.

White hat SEO, on the other hand, is the most ethical and long-term way to conduct SEO activities without fear of negative consequences.

Marketers should always use white hat SEO methods. Providing a good user experience while adhering to search engine guidelines can be extremely beneficial to websites. This technique is not only long-term, but it can also result in higher rankings on search engine result pages (SERPs).

Black Hat SEO Techniques

• Keyword Stuffing

Keyword stuffing is the use of multiple keywords in a single sentence. This technique refers to stuffing a page with keywords in order to rank higher in search results. The same words and sentences are repeated and rehashed in order to manipulate the Google search bot and improve rankings.

• Duplicate Content

This is one of the techniques in which the website owner simply copies content from another website onto his own. Isn’t stealing the goods of others a crime? The same holds true for content. Google is vehemently opposed to this practice and believes in original content.

• Cloaking

Considered as one of the hacker-man techniques, this practice involves showing one version of your website to the Google bot and another version to the user. 

This is done in two ways:

1. Showing an HTML text page to search engines, while showing a page full of CSS, JS, and image-heavy content to users.
2. Embedding text or keywords into a page and displaying this page only when the user-agent crawling the page is a search engine, not a human guest.

• Buying Links

This is an ill-practice where the website owner pays money to another website to give them a link back. There are many agencies selling such paid links, which are often scrappy and low-quality. You’d be better off without such toxic links on your website.

• Doorway Pages

Door pages, bridge, or jump pages are specifically created for focused queries and intended to rank high for specific keywords. These pages provide no value to the user and are exclusively used to deceive the search engine and move a guest from a searched query to another set of websites, i.e. a vague destination.

• Link Farming

A link farm is a site or group of sites created exclusively for link building. Every site in a link farm points to a site that is to be ranked higher on search engine results pages. Web crawlers rank a site by taking into consideration the number of websites that point to it, among other elements. Black Hat SEO makes use of this by increasing the number of backlinks a specific site gets from such link farms.

• Invisible Text or Links

A rather shabby attempt, this technique involves placing white text on a white background. The intention here is to match the text colour to the colour of the background. By doing so, website owners hide their keywords from users but make it visible to the Google bot. A similar practice is carried out for links.

• Spamming in Blog Comments

Ah, the intellectuals and scholars in the comments section. This is a strategy that involves adding comments on blog pages, along with a link to their website. This is purely and solely done with the expectation of getting a backlink from that particular site. Google now disregards such links from blogs; the website owners set the links as no-follow by default.

• Incorrect Re-directs

Redirects are a great technique to redirect the user to a properly functioning page if the current page is facing issues. Website owners use 301 redirects in such cases. However, the black hat “experts” use these redirects to lead the user to another page altogether. In this way, they deceive both the Google bot and users by showing them to a page with a bad URL which they did not intend to visit. 

• Private Blog Networks(PBN)

A private blog network (PBN) is a group of authority websites used primarily for link-building purposes. The PBN sites link to the main website using low-quality links with the intention of influencing the search engine. Each of these PBN sites links to the main site without linking to one another. Usually, PBNs make use of expired domains to link to, which are sites that had previously earned some kind of authority. PBN is one of the black hat SEO techniques as these expired domains are solely purchased to be made into private blog networks to create manipulative outbound links.

• Overly optimised pages

Do you know the saying: too much of anything is bad for you? The same applies to your pages. Sometimes SEO professionals get so busy trying to optimise their pages that they end up doing a tad too much. This includes using a lot of On-page elements like over-optimized anchor text, an extensive number of internal links, keyword-stuffed titles and descriptions, and content.

All of this can backfire and may end up getting you penalised by Google as your efforts will be considered as black hat SEO practices. 

• Bait and Switch

When using Bait and Switch, the initial step consists of writing a page for Google while including a set of keywords and, after ranking improves, changing it to different products and projects. Hence, a user gets to see something completely different from the topic they clicked on. This practice is also called Page Swapping, and it is used to trick users and search engines. Such unethical practices make up what is Black Hat SEO.

• Clickbait

Clickbait means an impressive and noticeable headline written to tempt the users to click on the link. This is a copywriting approach often used to draw attention by overemphasising a topic in order to encourage a visitor to click on a link that leads to irrelevant content. Methods such as these are used to bring in income derived from the number of clicks. It is an algorithm excessively used in tabloids and makes up a huge chunk of what is Black Hat SEO.

• Guest Post Spam

This is a Black Hat Technique used to get backlinks where messages are sent to bloggers to publish an irrelevant article with a do-follow link. Links to such articles during guest blogging activities can affect a site’s ranking. Despite being of poor quality, these linked blogs are still posted on irrelevant websites just for the sake of link-building.

• Negative SEO

This refers to the practice of using black hat SEO practices to disrupt a rival’s rankings in search engines. The steps include:

1. Hacking the website
2. Building numerous spammy links to the website
3. Copying the content and spreading it all over the internet
4. Pointing links to the website using various keywords
5. Removing the best backlinks from the website

• Automated Google queries

This is a black hat SEO practice where software is used to generate automated searches for particular keywords to make the site rank higher in search results. Automated queries are not allowed without prior permission by Google. Sending automated Google queries means the software is used to expand the total searches for a specified keyword to rank higher in SERP.

• Rich snippet markup spam

Rich snippets provide additional information about a website’s content. You can modify the snippet so that your content stands out from the competition on the SERP. This fantastic opportunity is now being abused by spammers to the point where Google has issued a strict report rich snippet spam’ tool. Rich snippet spamming occurs when website administrators mark up content that is not visible to users or provide misleading and unrelated content, reviews, and videos. False reviews and ratings, inaccurate or misleading information, and fake or nonexistent videos in rich snippet content are all examples of black hat SEO techniques.

• Article Spinning

Article spinning is a well-known black hat SEO technique. While search engines value high-quality content, Google penalises spun articles severely. Typically, an article is spun manually or with a computer programme, with the content rewritten using synonyms and sentence structure manipulation. The main goal of using spun articles is to spin thousands of pieces of content and post them to multiple websites at the same time. The spun articles are not unique, do not provide useful information, and are generally unreadable.

How to Report Black Hat SEO?

There are two scenarios in which black hat SEO techniques should be reported. The first is when your website is attacked by a malicious hacker, virus, or negative SEO activity such as spam links. Another example is when interconnected black hat techniques uncover spam-infested Web results for a competitive keyword on which your website ranks. To address these issues, you must file a webspam report through Google Search Central. Falsifying competitor page reports is also considered a black hat technique.

If your website has been attacked by a virus or malware, you can request a malware review once the malicious code has been removed.

If your website is the target of negative SEO campaigns, use Google Search Central’s Disavow Links Tool to remove the links.

Why Should One Avoid Black Hat SEO?

• Although black hat SEO is not unlawful, it breaks the webmaster guidelines regulated by search engines. 
• Mostly, pages that indicate the usage of black hat SEO tactics are deranked instantly, with the probability of “domain blacklisting” as one of the measures in domain penalties.
• Google penalty will result in dropping down the search results or being removed absolutely. This means the website will be earning less traffic and hardly any customers. While some agencies do offer Google penalty recovery services, it is best advised to refrain from the activities in the first place.

How to Avoid Black Hat SEO?

1. Avoid Cloaking: Providing inconsistent details to the search engine and the users can cause your site to be banned.
2. Write good quality content: Nothing beats the power of high quality and valuable content that visitors find helpful.
3. Follow structured data guidelines: This will help you show up higher on the search engine’s list and rank much better without having to use black hat SEO tricks.
4. Never buy or sell links: Buying or selling links for better traffic might seem worth it in the short run, but is a huge risk not worth taking. 
5. Avoid private blog networks: Private blog networks can be the kiss of death for your website. Google will penalise your website or ban it from appearing on the search list.
6. Stay up to date with search engine guidelines: Once you understand what is black hat SEO is, researching the updated search engine guidelines will keep you on track with the latest rules and regulations to avoid black hat methods.

The final word

It is understandable that we all want to rank higher in Google search results and have better sessions. Any technique is a good technique unless it interferes with or violates the Google Search Engine Guidelines.

So it’s up to you whether you want to be the villain who tries to get things done faster but in a crooked way, or the hero who does everything right to achieve results.

White Hat heroes or Black Hat villains? Which side are you on? Please let us know in the comments section.

FAQ’S

• What is Black Hat SEO?

Black Hat SEO is a set of ill practices against the search engine guidelines laid out by Google to rank higher on SERPs. It is the practice of manipulating SERPs through unethical SEO.

• Why is Black Hat SEO Unethical?

Black hat SEO is treated unethical as it not only goes against Google’s Webmaster Guidelines but also tricks both users and the search engines for improving rankings.

• Does Black Hat SEO Still Work?

Black hat SEO works but for a shorter period of time. Performing black hat SEO will get you penalised, resulting in dropping down the search results or being removed absolutely from the SERPs. 

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