Black Hat SEO consists of strategies, techniques and tactics that are used to increase a sites page ranking in search engines. These practices are disapproved because they only focus on search engines and not humans, which goes against search engine guidelines. Many people use these techniques to get a quick (but not lasting) financial return on their web site.
So how does it affect you? Using these techniques can result in your website being banned from search engines. If you’re trying to build a long-lasting business, avoid all Black Hat strategies. To avoid being banned from search engines, stay away from the following Black Hat tactics.
- Keyword Stuffing – this involves adding all keywords and keyphrases to the same page. This caters to search engines and makes it very difficult for humans to read.
- Link Farming – this involves buying, selling or trading links.
- Hidden Text – this involves using white text on a white background, setting the CSS to position the text off the screen or behind an image, or setting the font size to zero.
- Doorway Pages – this involves creating multiple pages for specific high-value phrases, but ends up sending visitors to the same destination.
- Duplicate Content – this involves copying a substantial amount of content from another website.
- Writing fake negative reviews on competitors pages.
- Creating fake social media pages to like, share or comment on.
To find out more about Black Hat tactics and strategies, check your Google Webmaster Guidelines.