Black hat SEO refers to techniques that are unethical that webmasters will use to get their websites to the top of SERPs. A lot of these techniques use to work but with Google’s algorithm updates, they have cracked down on sites using these black hat techniques and will actually penalize you site. Some of these techniques include:
Keyword Stuffing – This is when webmasters will put repeated keywords on the page where visitors won’t see them. Usually near the bottom of the page but it could be anywhere. They will also use invisible text or text color that matches the background so it looks like nothing is there.
Page Stuffing – This is when webmasters create multiple pages of duplicate content in order to try to push other sites out of search results. This no longer works as search engines are smart enough to compare pages to one another to determine if there is duplicate content. You will get penalized for duplicate content if you try this.
Paid Links or Link Farming – This is when websites buy links or pay others to link back to their site. Back links are an important factor in determining the relevancy of websites however paying for links is a big no no. If you are caught, and you will be, your site will be penalized or banned from indexing.
Cheating the search engines will provide short term results but in the long run, it will hurt more than it helps. Trying to recover from being penalized or banned is difficult and will double or even triple the time it would normally take using ethical white hat techniques.
By Tony Fong