What are Some Black Hat SEO Techniques?

Let’s discuss the most known black hat SEO methods and how they impact websites. If you do not know what black hat SEO is, our guide can help you unwrap it. It is important because your website needs SEO practices that meet Google SEO guidelines. 

But if you do not understand the difference between black hat SEO vs white hat SEO, your efforts could spread into the dust! So, let’s understand the definition of black hat SEO and why you need to avoid it anyhow.

Black Hat SEO is an unethical SEO technique used to improve a website's search engine rankings. These tactics relied on the system gaps and increased the traffic in the past. But now, they violate search engine guidelines, which can result in penalties.

The worst result it can bring is being removed from search results entirely. But still many SEO agencies try to use the techniques and overcome the low competent keywords in less time. Especially gambling and adult video sites cannot make any good on search engines, so they come with new and old black hat SEO tactics.

Why is it Called Black HAT SEO?

The terms actually came from old Western movies. During the white and black period, viewers could not differentiate colors well. So, filmmakers used specific colors in the props to differentiate the bad and good guys. Here, black hats are the symbol of villains who do terrible things. As tricky SEO techniques are also a terrible villainous act on Google’s Spam Policy, it is identified as black hat SEO.

People use black hat SEO as a shortcut for search engine ranking. It actually works, but before the detection! In the past, people sued to do the following things because the following things used to work.

• Keyword stuffing
• Link spam
• Pasting contents
• Cloaking

But now, the situation is improving. Google’s helpful content algorithm can detect the page's authenticity and its related links. No matter how many spam links a website has, Google will see its brand value and credibility through brand mention and content backlinks. 

Why Do People Use Black Hat SEO?

Black Hat SEO experts exploit Google's limitations to manipulate search rankings in a shortcut method. There are techniques like Private Blog Networks (PBNs) and purchased links. These are difficult for Google to detect, especially when links are layered or transactions are conducted offline. 

SEO experts craft spammy content and anchor text that aligns with Google's guidelines; as a result, no one can understand they are deceptive. However, Google's AI is constantly evolving, and while it may not detect all such tactics now, future improvements could expose and penalize these black hat practices.

Why Don’t Experts Like Black Hat SEO?

Now Google is so busy making its system strong overall as it is releasing updates day by day. They become very strict in content quality so that Google user has their faith in Google. Even there has been panic for AI content penalization for over a year. In such a case, there is no way black hat SEO can survive much longer. That’s why experts do not like to keep this uncertain practice. 

We cannot call black hat SEO illegal, as there are no laws for it. The best we can call it unethical like keyword stuffing, cloaking, and buying links. Recently, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has taken action against websites using deceptive SEO practices. 

Legal View on Black Hat SEO

Under U.S. law, there are ‘specific’ regulations for targeted online manipulation practices. So, black hat SEO tactics are generally considered illegal against these regulations. The worst result is penalties like being deindexed from search engine results pages. We already described that search engines like Google have strict guidelines against manipulative techniques. When you violate these guidelines, you are on the way to being deindexed.

How to Avoid Legal Pitfalls?

Using manipulative tactics has very strict and harsh legal consequences. We have seen companies have faced legal punishment for employing spam-oriented link-building techniques and content. 

“In 2023, we tested a content publishing site called sArticle. Google reported the website as poor, and our practices bought penalties from search engines and even lawsuits for violating competition laws or misleading consumers.”

So, we knew that staying updated on search engine guidelines is necessary for avoiding legal issues. As a website owner, you have to review their guidelines and best practices. If you follow the SEO benchmarks, your website will rank quicker than the black hat SEO practitioners.

There are 10 SEO techniques to avoid Black Hat SEO. These are -

• Buying Links to Develop Authority

Google ranks the website after calculating the backlinks. For example: if you have your URL posted on another website, your website gains authority by their verification. That means other websites can tag you by linking to your page. Here, black-hat SEO specialists send money to already established websites to manually put URLs on their sites.

The problem is the sellers will sell links and tags to many users. When Google detects it, your website could lose ranking. So you just avoid it. Instead of buying links, you can write guest posts on forum based websites and add your webpage links naturally in an informative blog or comment. Our guest posting service can be your backlinking solution!

• Spinning Article or Paraphrasing

Article spinning is a practice of copying and rephrasing content from other websites. We can keep this under the act of plagiarism. For black hat lovers, it might seem like an easy way to create content. They just post the same constant metrics paraphrases using AI tools. Google heavily penalizes duplicate or repetitive content.

Additionally, publishers can take legal action against those who plagiarize their work. It's important to note that originality is key in content creation. Since 2022, Google’s helpful content update has been prioritizing content made by people and made for people. You can differentiate your content by writing in your own unique voice, adding new insights for better ranking.

• Inserting Hidden Links

Don't try to hide links from Google. We have seen tricky SEO analysts putting hidden links. They often use HTML scripts or make the color and font transparent. Whether you disguise them in text or make them invisible, Google will detect and penalize you. 

Google’s search advocate, John Mueller, shared whether using external links is really helpful. But you have to be cautious, excessive irrelevant links can also harm your search rankings. Google's guidelines mark deceptive link practices as black hat SEO, such as—

• Text behind Images
• Using CSS to hide text
• Using zero-point font sizes
• Creating tiny hidden links

• Avoid Clickbait Headlines

Clickbait headlines can trick users into clicking, unlike anything else! It can harm your SEO. While they might increase clicks initially, they often lead to disappointed visitors and high bounce rates. Recently, we found a discussion about using captions that contain BMW and Mercedes related headlines. The publishers believe this will enhance their visibility as they are using trendy topics and keywords. But they do not know that their content is totally irrelevant to those clickbait captions, and search engines understand the context better than ever these days.

• Using the Circle of PBN

Private Blog Networks (PBNs) are groups of websites that link to each other to boost search engine rankings. In the early days, this tactic might seemed like an easy way to build backlinks, but now it's now a violation of Google's guidelines. Google has taken action against PBNs, and using them can result in significant ranking penalties. 

Of course, you can link to your own content anywhere, but creating a network of intentional links is considered deception. Instead, focus on ethical link-building strategies. This includes contributing guest posts to other websites and creating high-quality content that naturally attracts backlinks from other bloggers.

• Cloaking Webpages for SEO

SEO cloaking is a fraudulent SEO technique that involves presenting different content to search engines and human visitors. We call it a black hat SEO tactic because it tricks users into visiting a site under false pretenses. 

Black hat lovers use cloaking because it can bypass these protections and allow website owners to deliver unwanted content. Whereas, search engines like Google have measures in place to protect users from harmful websites. The latest Google updates unstructured website owners to provide people first content in order to be detected by the crawlers. 

• Image Mirroring

Although not a sustainable SEO strategy, many websites temporarily deceive Google by mirroring the same image. This process comprises uploading a stock image and changing its orientation, color, and aspect ratio to make it appear as a unique image. They do this practice because Google already ranked the main image. So, black hat SEO artists add the same alt text, captions, and description to rank it on top of the search results. You might now know, but these techniques were effective until Google brought in the lens algorithm, where they can detect images and metadata.

• Overusing Keyword and Anchor Text

Keywords have been the foundation of SEO since the introduction of search engines. But many SEO agencies love to stuff keywords without any understandable context. They even use the same anchor text to refer to a web page again and again. We think this will also fall under cloaking and spinning.

• Spamming in Blog Comments

You all have seen that Google keeps discussions from forums and blog posts on top of others to have genuine experience regarding the content. So, a large number of backlinks creators use the blog comment section to build links. But one thing they get wrong. They just copy and paste links. 

A standard practice would be to help someone in the comment section by providing information and related links (if possible). Google will consider direct links as spam and incorrect redirects. It can only lose the value of link commenting.

• Stealing Similar URLs

Stealing URLs was a frequent action from black hat SEO practitioners. They often buy a domain with a misspelled version of a popular website. For example, you can buy “peuple dot com” to impersonate the popular magazine site “people dot com.” When the readers mistake the spell, they will visit your site, and you can redirect them anywhere. 

Another example is buying different types of domains and using a popular name so that people can find your fake website and visit it thinking the original. Like, you can buy “facebook dot biz” and try to rank it. But Google manually reviews websites nowadays, and it will always rank webpages from websites with higher authority. 

The difference between White Hat SEO and Black Hat SEO lies in their approaches to improving search engine rankings. While White Hat SEO focuses on ethical, user-friendly practices, Black Hat SEO employs deceptive tactics that violate search engine guidelines, risking penalties and long-term damage.

A white-hat SEO agency will always contribute to a website's online success by implementing ethical SEO practices. At VISER X, we follow these 6 steps as white-hat SEO services for the best organic results quickly. If you are wondering what are their approaches, take a look at the list below—

• SEO Audit
• Technical Issue Fixing
• Keyword Research
• Content Writing
• On-Page SEO
• Off-Page SEO
• Reporting

So, the common black hat SEO methods are link purchase, spinning, hidden links, clickbait titles, PBN, cloaking, image mirroring, keyword stuffing, spamming, and stealing URLS. But doing such things will result in getting banned. Do not forget that search engines are at the peak of the AI revolution now, so they have become smarter. So avoid any types of black hat SEO techniques, intentionally or unintentionally.

What are doorway pages in black hat SEO?

Doorway pages are deceptive website pages created to rank for similar keywords and redirect users to a different landing page. Making doorway pages will violate Google's guidelines. As a result, you can harm your website's rankings. 

How does black hat SEO misuse schema markups?

Schema markup helps search engines understand your content better. It is one of the prior reasons to get rich snippets in search results. Often, black hat SEO specialists use a WordPress plugin to add schema markup, but they rely on keyword stuffing by providing inaccurate information. 

How do people hack websites to practice black hat SEO?

After the hacking, hackers silently add new business pages to high-authority websites. The loyal customers visit the websites and get redirected to the link featured on the page. They even optimize the page with good content so that it ranks on Google.