Let us go through some of the known Black Hat SEO techniques:
- Keyword Stuffing and Stacking
- Duplicate or Redundant Content
- Cloaking
- Doorway or Gateway Pages
- Manipulative Link Exchanges
- Link Farms
- Hidden keywords (text) and Links
- Article Spinning for Spam Content
- Page Hijacking
- Mirror Websites
- Typo Spam
Keyword stuffing and stacking
Keyword stuffing: This is one of the older Black Hat SEO techniques used by several webmasters. It involves making use of keywords at as many places as possible (in your website and web pages). Many people often try manipulate web content for the search engine crawlers (or bots) by making use of excessive keywords throwing the keyword density rate to more than 15% for a single webpage. This gives a feel of spam content which fails to impress the visitors as well as crawlers.
Meta tag stuffing: along similar lines, there is a practice of using a keyword several times in meta tags to represent the content on different web pages. This leads to meta tag stuffing which is again not ethical as it doesn’t represent the true picture.
Keyword stacking: it involves the habit of some website owners to use same keywords at different places by simply playing with the letters in those words. This is done to make them look like new keywords and is concerned as an act of deception by search engines. Hence, one should avoid this practice as well.
Duplicate or Redundant content
One of the pre-requisites for writing content on any website or blog is that it should be absolutely original. The reason is only original content gets crawled and indexed by search engine crawlers (or bots). Duplicate content can exist in part or whole i.e. someone can copy only few lines from your web content, while some others can copy the entire post.
No search engine will index the same content twice. In other words, if you have copied some content on your website or blog from some other source, the search engines will be able to identify the duplicate content and will refrain from indexing it.
So, one should always aim at creating original content that is unique and that adds value to the website / blog. Only then will indexing take place and your content will appear in search engine results pages. To avoid duplicate content, make sure you are well-versed with usage of online plagiarism tools. If you find some other website that has copied your content. Make sure you file a Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) violation complaint against the concerned webmaster.
Cloaking
Definition: it is a Black Hat SEO technique that different web content is shown to the search engine spider (for crawling / indexing) as compared to the web content displayed to the users.
This is a deceptive activity wherein the webmasters submit different webpages to search engines making them believe that the website shows some particular information. However, in reality when the users click on the search engine result link of that website, they will be redirected to some other content that was not submitted to the search engine. Thus, some webmasters try to act smart and show two different versions of the same web page to search engines and visitors.
Search engine algorithms are constantly updated to track such deceptions. In fact, Google declares harsh penalties for such websites by completely banning them from search engine result listing.
Doorway or gateway pages
These are pages that are created to spam search engine indexes with the intention of redirecting the visitors to another web page (or pages) when some specific search query is used.
The doorway pages are of extremely low quality with less meaningful content and more keyword stuffing. The sole purpose of these pages is to optimize on basis of a keyword (or set of keywords in search query) and increase the rank and appear higher in the search engine results to earn quick profits. But, such activities are often caught by smart search engine algorithms and could result in severe penalties for the website.
Examples:
- Having several pages on a website with similar content to get higher rank for particular search queries.
- Getting several domain names aiming at specific regions to target visitors to a page.
Manipulative Link Exchanges
With the growth of social networking websites and freelancing websites, it is a common occurrence to see many people posting ads like “I can provide 1000 links to your website or blog, if you direct your traffic to my site”. Some people even offer payment for getting links to their website. Please note that genuine link building doesn’t involve such manipulative link exchanges.
Google has introduced several updated in last few years that has penalized website doing link exchange which are not natural. A good SEO practice is to allow links getting built in a natural way and not by striking a deal with some low quality website to get hundreds of links overnight. It should be a gradual process and your website should be stuffed with links, nor should your website links be stuffed on one particular website.
As per Google, every link (incoming or outgoing) that tries to manipulate Page Rank for better rank in search engine results is violating Google’s Webmaster guidelines.
Examples:
- Mutual exchange of links between two webmasters only for the sake of cross-linking.
- Usage of automated services to generate links for your blog or website.
- Exchanging money or free products in return for links.
In fact, the Google Penguin update tracked all websites that exchanged money to get links or appear on other sites. All such websites were penalized heavily. Ever since, webmaster have reduced the practice of monetary exchange for links.
Link Farms
This is derived from the concept of link exchanges. In this act, a large number of websites get associated with each other via links (and hyperlink) to serve the common objective of spamming search engines.
There are many websites who in their quest for quick popularity get associated with websites offer a different niche and mutually agree to have cross links. Google or any other engine doesn’t approve the practice of having links to website / blogs on your webpages even if they are not related to each other (content-wise).
To avoid getting blacklisted by Google, it is better to not try such bad practices like Link Farming.
Hidden keywords and links
Many webmasters are still of the notion that having some additional keywords (or links) will help them rank better in the search engines. However to avoid getting caught with the Black Hat SEO technique of keyword stuffing, some webmasters try hiding additional keywords (or link) by writing them using text color exactly same as the background color. For visitors, it is difficult to read such hidden keywords because of the same color of text and background.
However, search engines are pretty smart and will identify such excessive keywords (and hidden links) sooner rather than later. Search engine bots are equipped with automated systems which can easily trace such hidden practices. And needless to say, once you caught, the penalties could be pretty severe. So, it is better to ensure that your websites are free of any hidden keywords or hidden text. For this purpose, make sure you verify your source code and logs.
Different ways in which text is hidden are listed below:
- Writing white text on a white background
- Placing text beneath an image
- Using font size zero (Link is generally hidden by linking any small characters on your web page.)
There are exceptions to this rule i.e. certain technologies used by your site such as images, JavaScript, flash files, etc. many not be easily accessible. These are not considered as bad practices or Black Hat SEO methods. For such cases, it is always preferable to include descriptive text for better accessibility by search engines. Say, for example, using alt attribute for text description related to images. Similarly, using tag for JavaScript is a better option to improve accessibility.
Article Spinning for Spam Content
This is another questionable SEO technique that is used by many webmasters. The purpose behind using this Black Hat SEO technique is to get unique version of content for posting on article directories and other sources to get backlinks (inward links).
It involves rewriting certain sentences of an article, certain phrases, certain keywords, whole paragraphs, etc. using corresponding alternative text. The objective is to make the article look new even though it is based on similar content by making use of alternative words, phrases, sentences, etc. that have, same meaning. Many believe this way optimization can be achieved without actually getting caught for duplicate content. It is indeed a myth.
Many so-called SEO content writers even submit content using manual article spinning to save time. However, several webmasters do not accept content generated through article spinning as it is of a relatively low quality. One can easily make out the difference after reading such an article.
The automated technique of article spinning makes use of spin syntax or spintax, which refers to a list of sentences, words, synonyms, etc. that are included in an article. The concerned spinning software will make use of relevant synonyms to replace certain existing words, sentences, etc. to generate a new version of the original article. This new article will look unique, but will be of a lesser quality than the original one. The reason being the software may not always substitute the synonyms with the correct part of speech. In simple words, the software may not always understand the context in which a particular word is used and could replace it with a synonym even when it could change the entire meaning of the sentence. This makes the spinned article a bit unreadable. Many people even try to spin the article multiple times using spinning software so that they can submit several topic articles to several different clients without spending extra efforts. However, with every spin, the article becomes less unique as it tends to use the same spintax. For genuine SEO, one should stay away from this method of generating spam content.
Page Hijacking
This Black Hat SEO technique involves submitting dummy content (copy of some known website) to the search engine crawler (spider) as if it is original content and instead directing the visitors who click on the web page links in search results to some other fraud and malicious websites. The purpose behind this is to achieve high rank in search results for specific keywords, but it ends up being search engine index spamming.
This concept works on the rule that search engine crawlers do not allow two websites with same content. When such duplication is identified, they often keep only one URL. Spammers implement page hijacking by making a copy of higher ranked website to ensure that their own website appears higher in future search engine results. It is a form of cloaking method.
Mirror Websites
As the name suggests, this techniques involves someone hosting multiple websites having similar content in all of them.
A mirror site is a copy of a website or set of files hosted at a remote location. Generally, a mirror site could be static copy of the original site and so webmaster will have to update the content of mirror site every time there is update on the original site. Alternatively, mirror site could be a dynamic copy of original site that gets updated with changes to original site.
Different reasons for using Mirror Sites
- To balance the load on server and prevent any breakdown effects due to excessive traffic by providing alternative site with same content.
- For effective backup or achieving by making sure that a complete set of files is hosted elsewhere to deal with damaged server.
- To make provisions for quick downloads across different geographical locations.
- To prevent censorship of data and allow mirror sites to continue at particular locations even when the original site is banned or shut down.
- To continue making historical content (that is outdated) accessible to public who are still interested in it.
Typo Spam
This technique involves using misspell words (or words that are spelt in a wrong manner) as well as domain names to regain lost traffic for a website.
Let us consider an example of Typo Spam with regards to domain names. Now, Google.com is a popular domain name that gets huge traffic on a daily basis. Some webmasters might try to cash in on this by registering a domain name like googlee.com (note the extra ‘e’) to get some amount of the traffic that Google.com gets. However, Google search algorithms are able to track down such cases of typo spam and penalize the websites accordingly.
Black Hat SEO – A Strict No
All the Black Hat SEO techniques discussed previously need not be implemented by a webmaster. As mentioned earlier, there is no shortcut to success and every website owner should stick to genuine SEO using White Hat SEO techniques only.
But, one needs to be careful and not do over optimization on their websites with regards to keywords usage, link building, etc. The several updates from Google (like Penguin and Panda) as well as other search engines have started penalizing excessive optimization. Just be patient, stick to genuine SEO techniques and write unique content to attract visitors. To be safe, strictly follow the webmaster guidelines (Google Webmaster guidelines) and avoid any penalties or getting banned from search engine listings.
I’m a freelance Web Designer and SEO Expert I have been working as a web designer and Search Engine Optimiser for over 8 years, and have done lots of work over that time. My skills cover many aspects of graphic design, web design, illustration, search engine optimisation (SEO), Social media optimization (SMO) & Search engine marketing (SEM) and other technical knowledge.
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