The relevance of having better search visibility of a link on the search engine translates to higher traffic to its website. It is a vital part of digital marketing strategic element to operate a successful online business. The more traffic your website gets, the more opportunity you will get for lead conversion. You may end up having more loyal customers. Landing your search engine ranking on the first page will ensure getting up to 71% link clicks.
Top search engines like Google are regularly updating their algorithm and guidelines for SEO professionals and web developers. Going with the rules can take time to see results with SERP ranking. Using Black Hat SEO is tempting to achieve goals in their SEO campaign, although it means using unethical techniques.
This content post provides in-depth insight into the consequences of Black Hat SEO and practices to avoid them. Read on to know what techniques to avoid that can negatively affect your campaign.
How does Black Hat SEO have unethical strategies compared to White Hat SEO?
SEO is a dynamic part of your digital marketing strategy that can boost or hamper your business site’s success. But it depends on which type of hat you are choosing to wear. White hat SEO is helpful in developing relevant content to get more click-throughs and increase your exposure.
But Black Hat SEO can result in potential penalties if the algorithm of the search engine detects so. Your site may face the consequence of shutting downs high bounces, and your user experiences will turn unsatisfactory. You should avoid Black Hat SEO strategies at all costs as they don’t match with the search engine algorithms. Black Hat SEO marketers manipulate various optimization processes in SEO elements to get higher rankings. Therefore, while White Hat SEO is an ethical way of higher search engine ranking, Black Hat SEO is unethical.
What are the reasons Black Hat SEO is not acceptable in digital marketing?
SEO is one of the major ways for businesses to get brand visibility. It is due to the audiences who like to discover products and services on the internet for research. About 8.5 billion searches per day alone come from Google, according to Internet Live Stats. It influences businesses to get to the higher rank on the Google search for relevant keywords to get clicks. However, the technique may involve unethical processes.
These unethical procedures don’t play fair for other competitors who use organic techniques to rank. The concept is about making a fool of users or breaking the search engine ranking principles. The black hat SEO marketer has poor SEO content that doesn’t answer the user’s query or need. All these techniques compromise the reliability of search results. Hence, the website becomes unreliable to the target audience and affects its reputation in the niche.
What potential risks can you face if search engine algorithms detect the black hat technique used?
There is always the risk of facing negative consequences when you indulge in taking shortcuts through unethical processes. Search engines also have severe penalties for sites that use black hat techniques for SEO strategy. Search engines can lose their index along with manual punishments. This consequence can put the site into a sharp decline in its traffic and SERP ranking. All these can hamper the credibility and reputation of a website. So, it’s good to be aware of what major black hat SEO practices can severely damage your search engine ranking.
Harmful Black Hat SEO practices you should avoid that can affect your organic ranking
Businesses may knowingly or unknowingly use black hat SEO techniques. These black hat SEO techniques are risky and can penalize the website, no matter what your case is. Here are the 5 Black Hat Techniques you need to avoid:
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Duplicate website content
It is your website rating that will suffer if you publish duplicate content. This is a common black hat technique if your SEO campaign is about off-page SEO. It is a clear consideration of plagiarism and is a clear consideration of plagiarism and unethical website design. Therefore, search engines do not accept any ranking for detecting a site that has duplicate content.
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Content Cloaking
Cloaking is one of the old and most well-known black hat SEO tactics that is still in use. The concept of this trick involves intentionally presenting some other content that is not relevant to the search query. The cloaking technique is mostly used for the purpose of concealing any spam comments or links, high number of ads, bot contents, etc. However, due to any malicious software or sneaky redirects, the user’s privacy can fall into jeopardy.
This confuses the search engine crawlers to appear as a relevant site for the searcher. Moreover, the algorithm may find the site relevant for various keywords that are not relevant to the content. With the next algorithm update, the search engine algorithm will catch on with the cloaking, and the site will get a penalty.
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Paid links and hidden links
Using backlinks from reliable sources is a white hat SEO technique for off-page SEO services. However, the use of the paid links black hat technique is very much prominent. You should use helpful SEO tools for digital marketing to detect texts that are hyperlinked and used as anchor text. Check to see if they are relevant to the content and don’t appear arbitrary to the link.
Additionally, you can look for a result page that has a lot of text links that are randomly placed on the site. They can have a high possibility of being paid links. Algorithms can easily find these links you have bought when the search engine updates them. Similarly, black hat SEO experts can use hidden links as white hat backlinks for ranking faster on SERPs. Your site may include hidden texts in the image optimization or off-screen links.
Moreover, they can use the trick of zero font size and similar color text and background for hidden link tactics. You can use online SEO tools to search through your site completely. So you can avoid penalties before the algorithms get to you.
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Keyword Stuffing in SEO
Keyword-stuffing black hat techniques are as they sound. It refers to the process of generating content that has certain keywords used multiple times where they are not relevant. It may seem like a white hat technique. However, according to search engine SEO guidelines, keyword stuffing leads to losing the relevancy of human writing. The techniques may quickly rank your content, but your target audience won’t find your content interesting. All your posts sound like bots, making the search engines appeal and tricking the algorithm.
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Excessive number of ads
Google will penalize any result pages that show too many ads on its page. You can use ads on the page only if they don’t frequently show up or obstruct the user views. This black hat technique can degrade your site’s user experience. The site has to have a website layout that aligns with the search engine algorithm ranking guidelines. You may lose your traffic if the algorithm detects too many ads on your site.
Any scenario where the Black hat technique for boosting SEO ranking can be acceptable?
Black hat SEO goes against the rules of search engine ranking. Any results you get won’t last for a long time. So, no reliable SEO expert practices it. The SEO landscape is quite competitive, and using tricks to get traffic is not good for others in the competition. Investing in white hat SEO practices will engage in generating relevant content useful to consumers and offer a positive user experience. These practices will adhere to search engine guidelines to boost your search engine ranking. Black hat SEO doesn’t follow ethical rules in SERPs that are unfair to others. Hence, these scenarios are not acceptable in the online ecosystem.
How to recover from any black hat SEO search engine penalty?
Many might think that if a website is penalized for black hat technique use, it’s the end for them. However, it is possible to recover your website from being a penalized platform by search engines like Google. The website owner has to detect where the black hat techniques are used across their SEO marketing campaigns. Then, address them with rectifying tactics.
You will have to submit your reconsideration request for the search engine algorithm. The algorithm will check whether your site is following white hat techniques for SEO campaigns or not. You will have to demonstrate that you are committing to follow ethical SEO practices. The whole process will take a lot of time as it involves building trust with the search engines.
What practices can you integrate to avoid Black Hat SEO?
Ethical SEO practices are essential for businesses today, whether they are running physical stores or online retail shops. More than 50% of web traffic comes from search engines among the online consumer and brand engagement. Therefore, you should engage with white-hat best practices to prevent any black-hat SEO risk for your business.
- Collaborate with an SEO service provider that has experienced SEO experts with your industry knowledge. They must run the campaign ethically without any shady job. SEO strategies take time to generate the desired ranking, as you can’t get organic leads overnight. So, be practical about the campaign’s timeline. You should not trust any SEO partner promising desired results within a short timeline. They are most probably engaging in black hat techniques.
- Perform thorough keyword analysis to form a list of relevant keywords for your target market. Make sure the contents are on the topics of audience searches. The more the content context is engaging and relevant, the audience will find it helpful and most likely check your services. You should not rewrite content from any other site but generate authentic content. Follow through search engine’s content guidelines to ensure it is high-quality, authentic content.
- There should be no cloaking that can lead search engine crawlers to confuse with one content intent. This may involve the crawler to direct to another site. The links should always prioritize solving the user’s concern and boost their user experience. Make sure the off-page and on-page SEO makes your links on the result pages crawlable. It helps the crawler to not just look at the link but check out other pages on the site.
- Make sure to follow the SEO principles of a search engine while integrating your website data with accuracy. You should not have any misleading information on the website for the audience and traffic. Configure your Google business profile with accurate information, too, with your other social media platforms to connect with. It will give consumers more ideas about your business profile.
- Some websites may have non-responsive designs or broken links. Google may not put the website in the penalty list directly, but they should index it as a mobile-friendly website. It will impact your site’s growth in the long run as more traffic comes from mobile searches than desktop.
- Do not engage in building any private blog network for link-building strategies. Make sure your website and the content are distinguishable to get organic traffic. Offer premium-grade on-page experience with the timely posting of relevant content with a responsive design that meets your target audience’s needs.
The Bottom Line
You don’t want your SEO efforts and campaign investments to go to waste while facing black hat SEO penalties. The results are only temporary when you don’t follow the search engine ranking guidelines. Search engines frequently perform algorithm updates and get manual reviews to see such unethical techniques used. Therefore, it becomes a matter of time before your website loses traffic and reliability of transparency with black hat. Your site authority will lower with a bad user experience.
So, choose the best SEO strategy for your business with an understanding of how White and Black Hat SEO works. Keep away from Black Hat SEO practices and use white hat practices to avoid such scenarios to conduct recovery.
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