Black Hat SEO: what is it and how can you avoid it? –

Hosting Mautic QuickStart -50% with support in Spanish
24 hours and free training

Send up to 1,000,000 emails/year. Mautic support in Spanish 24 hours, 365 days

SEO positioning is one of the main concerns of any business that has an online presence.

It will be especially important for you if you sell online and are looking to drive traffic to your eCommerce.

Problems come when you don’t have experience and you end up committing infractions penalized by Google, something that can happen due to ignorance or malpractice, but in any case, this type of negative action, known as Black Hat SEO, will bring you more problems than joys.

What is Black Hat SEO?

Not everyone knows it, but positioning techniques and actions in Google, as well as in other search engines, can be categorized into two types of strategy:

On one side is the well-known White Hat SEO.
On the other we have the practices of Black Hat SEO.

Literally, Black Hat SEO means “black hat SEO” (search engine optimization or search engine optimization).

The most exact definition of this concept is the one that Google gives us, since it is the Internet giant who can veto us for making use of it. It defines it as “actions that manipulate search results”, which means “anything that improves rankings without Google directly agreeing”.

“Black Hat SEO refers to those unethical techniques used by some pages to improve their positioning without following Google’s rules.”

In contrast, there is White Hat SEO, which includes ethically correct techniques, and which do comply with the guidelines set by search engines to position a web page.

Difference between Black and White Hat SEO

If Black Hat SEO is considered the way to cheat to improve positioning, White Hat SEO can be understood as the way to improve positioning by following Google’s rules.

“The main objective of applying White Hat SEO practices is to make a page more relevant to search engines in a natural way.”

To get a good White Hat SEO you must:

Create quality content: And it should be clear, useful to readers, and easy to link to from other pages. That is to say, useful also for the sector.
take care of the design: Taking into account, in addition, accessibility and adaptability to all devices.
Take into account the code: A good HTML structure is basic, as is using the right tags.
Avoid duplication of content: Both with other pages and within your own website.

Why avoid Black Hat SEO techniques?

It has already become clear that Black Hat SEO is considered a bad practice and that Google penalizes it, but… how does this technique really affect your website?

It is quite common to think that as long as Google “doesn’t catch you”, you can perform Black Hat SEO and ignore whether it is a good or bad thing.

Consequences of Black Hat SEO in the short term

With the use of negative SEO techniques, we will be able to improve our position in search engines only for a limited time, since our website will have:

Low quality links.
Duplicate content.
Generation of damage to the positive SEO of the page.

“As it would be popularly said, Black HAT SEO is bread for today and hunger for tomorrow.”

Therefore, it is usual to perceive a great improvement in the positioning during the first days, which will not last.

Little by little, the situation of the page will seem that it is “going crazy”, appearing every day in one position, until the long-term negative effects appear.

Long-term consequences of Black Hat SEO

In the long term algorithmic penalties will come. That is, Google will realize the techniques you are using and will begin to penalize your positioning.

In this case, you will notice how your website will disappear from the top positions in the search results for the keywords that interest you, establishing itself in much worse positions (from which it will be difficult for you to leave).

If you keep doing this type of strategies, you may end up getting banned from Google services. Keep in mind that it is the main search engine, and that it also offers many other services such as G+, YouTube, MyBusiness, etc.

The 8 Most Popular Black Hat SEO Techniques

Despite the consequences of negative positioning, many businesses opt for it and try to trick Google with all kinds of techniques.

To ensure that your website does not suffer the terrible consequences that we have seen above, and avoid Black Hat SEO, you must identify what its best-known techniques consist of:

1) Cloaking

It is one of the most developed techniques and requires professional help, since it is necessary to have enough programming knowledge to be able to do cloaking without being botched.

“It consists of showing different contents taking into account whether the person reading us is a user or a search engine robot.”

With cloaking, more natural content is offered to users, and much more forced content is offered to search engines in order to quickly increase positions. The bad thing is that when the robots detect this duplicity, they quickly penalize you.

2) Keyword Stuffing

Keyword stuffing is a strategy that was not initially penalized by Google, but the abuse of this type of action ended up forcing the search engine to categorize it as a bad practice.

“It’s about stuffing the content as much as possible with keywords to get better results with this false over-optimization.”

When the SEO of websites began, it was believed that over-optimization was positive, and high keyword density was widely abused. Finally, Google has ended up penalizing this practice as well, in favor of simpler and easier to read texts.

3) Keyword Spamming

Performing keyword spamming is penalized, and it is also very annoying for users, since this type of action generates a very bad reputation.

“It consists of including keywords throughout the web pages without looking for them to make sense within the texts, solely for the purpose of positioning.”

4) Backdoors

With backdoors, we are talking about Black Hat SEO techniques that no longer focus only on what you do on your website, but on how the competition is attacked to negatively influence its positioning.

“Backdoors are backdoors that have some very vulnerable websites, through which the competition enters and puts hidden and negative information on the web.”

These types of “backdoors” are often used to carry out other Black Hat techniques on the pages of competitors, in order to bring penalties to them.

5) Hidden text

This type of technique does not bother users and does not directly affect the reputation of the brand, but it is still something highly penalized by Google.

“It is about hiding text or keywords with the same background color, with a very small size or moving it to a point that cannot be perceived by the user.”

6) Spinning

It could be translated as copy or “cut-paste”, which is the expression we use the most to talk about this type of action.

“Using professional tools, various pieces of copied content are cut and pasted to create content that looks original.”

Plagiarism in Google is penalized between pages, and even within the contents of the same website.

7) Page Hijacking

This is a very advanced Black Hat technique that is also used to attack competitors and is undoubtedly one of the least ethical of all.

“Page Hijacking consists of hijacking a page, generating a new very similar copy to make the search engine believe that the copy is the original.”

In this way, the original website is penalized until it, or Google, realizes the deception. It is a technique widely used by those who try to steal passwords, bank accounts, etc.

8. Link trading

This is a very difficult practice to detect, as Google does not tell the difference between purchased and naturally acquired links. What catches your attention is that the backlinks increase in a suspicious way.

“The sale of links is based on exchanging links with web pages with a high Page Rank or Domain Authority to improve popularity and improve rankings.”

7 Tips to avoid Black Hat SEO on your website

As you can see, there are many Black Hat techniques that force the SEO actions of competitors to be negative to cause them to be penalized.

To prevent this from happening on your website, I am going to give you a series of tips that will keep those who try to harm your business at bay:

1. Perform a deep analysis of your website

Use tools that help you better understand what is happening on your website. Tools that help you measure traffic, where it comes from, where they leave the web, what the user experience is like, etc. For example:

Google Search Console.
Google Analytics.
SEMrush.

Thanks to this type of analysis, you will have more control of everything that happens on your website. In addition, you must study well what type of products or services you sell, who you are targeting and what your sales funnels are like.

2. Keep an eye on incoming links

This is the aspect with which you will quickly notice if someone tries to do some unethical action on your website. When you detect links that point to your website and are not good, be alert!

Incoming links are very positive, as long as they are of quality and come from really good pages that can add value to what you offer.

3. Avoid bots

The use of bots can be very attractive because of the amount of time you save on day-to-day work. However, these types of automations are the closest thing to opening the doors of your website.

Use only quality tools, knowing the developer and always being careful to protect your page.

4. Analyze redirects

Think that many tools or content that you link from your website may have changed. You must be vigilant to modify those links or remove them, see where they point, and check that they are always quality redirects.

You should also analyze the redirects you make within your own page. Make sure Google them…