When it comes to search marketing, there are two approaches: white hat SEO and black hat SEO.
White hat SEO refers to marketers that follow the “rules” of internet marketing by employing best practices tactics and strategies. Black hat SEO refers to marketers that alter established practices in order to basically “cheat” the system.
What exactly is black hat SEO?
Black hat SEO is the practice of violating search engine standards in order to manipulate SERPs (search engine results pages) in order to get higher ranks. Marketers who are caught utilizing black hat SEO strategies may face Google fines, removal from search engines, or a full decline in KPIs.
What exactly are black hat SEO tactics?
The entire purpose of search engine algorithms is to offer consumers the most relevant results for their searches. Marketers that use black hat SEO approaches effectively steal higher SERP rankings from those who use well-established and organic white hat methods. Here are some examples of popular black hat SEO techniques:
Keyword overuse
Keyword stuffing is exactly what it sounds like: jamming keywords into your article. We all understand the value of keywords in terms of rankings and traffic, which is why black hat SEOs will stuff as many as they can into a piece of material. The more keywords there are, the greater the chances of the article ranking well. Keyword stuffing, according to Google, is:
- A list of phone numbers with no extra value.
- Text blocks listing cities and places for which a website is attempting to rank.
- Repeating the same words or phrases so frequently that it seems forced.
Google is becoming increasingly intelligent, and it can detect when a piece of information has been altered with keywords. Instead, design your content with purpose and search intent in mind. Material created for humans surpasses content created for bots.
Content that is of poor quality
Prior to the Google Panda upgrade in 2011, search engines had difficulty distinguishing duplicate or poor material. It is now much better at this.
Low-quality material might be a previously published item that has been paraphrased by a writer or machine. These bits of content are typically created fast and utilized in outreach or link-building activities. This form of material provides little value to the reader and is just utilized for link-building, which we shall discuss later.
Similarly, some website owners may employ text that is the same color as their backdrop to ‘hide’ keywords inside their pages. This enables a site to rank for keywords that appear to be invisible. This can attract traffic to a site via unrelated terms, increasing its traffic.
Purchasing links
The significance of backlinks in an SEO strategy cannot be overstated. The more backlinks (external sites that connect to your own) a site has, the more trustworthy and authoritative Google believes it to be.
Getting links to a fresh website might be difficult. After all, why would anyone link to a site that has no traffic or authority? As a result, many SEOs pay for links. Numerous sites and blogs will compensate SEO marketers for the placement of material and links on their sites. This might range from £15 to over £200, and in some situations, much more.
Google prohibits the purchase of links. We discussed it previously, but buying links is just another technique to game search engines. The more sponsored connections a site has, the more backlinks it has, and the higher a site and its related pages are pushed up in SERPs. This may not even be excellent or relevant content for the users’ search intent, yet it will appear as a top result due to its large backlink count.
The issue with compensated connections
Paying for connections is a delicate line to tread. You may notice short-term gains, but if caught, you might face severe penalties. This undoes all of your hard work and costs you a lot of money.
Rather than paying for connections, you should concentrate on providing high-quality content that is relevant to your sector. Promote it organically on social media and promote these posts for further visibility. It will take much longer to notice the advantages, but once you do, they will be legitimate and genuine, and will never be ‘taken away’ from you. Not like they would if done using black hat techniques.
Do you need assistance with your SEO strategy? Contact us immediately at +1 (613) 416 7874, +1 (386) 400 5005, OR +90 (212) 900 9094 to see how we can collaborate to drive your digital marketing.
