Using black hat SEO tactics is the same as turning to the dark side in SEO. Black hat SEO tactics will trump all white-hat tactics, and if you employ these, your page will probably not get ranked by Google. You may get away with these tactics for a short while, but when Google finds out you have joined forces with Vader, you’ll be penalized
On-Page and Off-Page
The difference between on and off-page SEO tactics is simple. On-page is anything you do on the website to get ranked, and off-page is whatever you do off the website that tells Google you are a site worth ranking. Let’s see some bad ideas people have used to try and rank better.
Black Hat SEO 1: Keyword Stuffing
This tactic makes for a very poor online experience. The idea is that if a keyword is virtually stuffed into every possible place it would fit, Google would rank it high and a website would make it to the top of the list. The downside is that you have a website that looks completely unnatural and totally unprofessional. It’s like taking a bodybuilder and stuffing them full of steroids for 6 months; the efforts are obvious and the look is awkward.
Black Hat SEO 2: Hidden Content
Most webmasters know how awful keyword stuffing can look, so somewhere along the line someone got the idea to hide all that unattractive keyword stuffing so the user wouldn’t see it but Google still would. Some use invisible text in the background in white, putting it on a portion of the website that isn’t visible or using text that’s visible when javascript is disabled. When Google finds out, or worse, your competitor, you may just find yourself with a spam report to deal with.
Black Hat SEO 3: Link Buying
A site that has high link popularity can be thought of as trustworthy and authoritative site, making the linked website a more credible choice. That means you don’t need outstanding content or services that make you a cut above the rest, you just need some money to buy links. Unfortunately, buying links is a violation of Terms and Service and it can get you banned from indexing at a heavy price. In 2011 JC Penny was caught red-handed using this tactic and lost profits for a fiscal quarter from search engines for 90 days. If you haven’t got as much clout as JC Penny, you’ll likely get banned for longer.
Black Hat SEO 4: Spam Seeding
Getting your readers to interact with your website and comment is a great way to promote your service or product, but it can lead to a terrible ranking if you’re not careful. Having a comments section enables those who write comments to link you to not-so savory places on the web, and this is going to hurt your ranking. In the same way that if you had yourself a teleportation device in your living room linked directly to the gates of Hell, people may not want to come over for tea with you.
Black Hat SEO 5: Cloaking
Websites would sometimes rather serve different content to a human user than a search engine. A cloaked website will commonly give a search engine a text-rich, keyword-rich website that has no aesthetic value so they can receive a high ranking. When a human visitor comes along, the page gets switched and you’ll generally see a flashy, content-poor website attempting to entice them to spend as much on their credit cards as they can. Also another violation of Terms and Service.
Mike is the SEO Manager at TechWyse Internet Marketing. Staying on top of the latest SEO trends isn’t only part of his job description, yet a passion of his. To keep up to Mike’s speed follow @Techwyse on Twitter.
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