Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is an constantly evolving online marketing technique aimed at attracting more visitors to your website. However, there are also practices known as Black Hat SEO promoted by some companies which can ultimately harm your search result rankings and damage your business’ overall reputation. It’s important to recognise these tactics for what they truly are – dubious shortcuts with no real benefit and the potential to send your website tumbling down Google’s rankings.
What is Black Hat SEO?
Black Hat SEO is the use of techniques which abuse and ‘game’ search engine algorithms in an attempt to drive more traffic to a website. These tactics are generally unethical and deceptive and while they may seem like a good way to increase traffic, they violate search engine rules, harm how your website ranks and can damage its reputation and the reputation of your business.
The term ‘Black Hat’ itself has its roots all the way back to 1950s western movies – where heroes donned white hats while villains pulled on their black ones!
How search engines rank your site and how they can penalise you
Google and other search engines publish a set of guidelines which help website owners, designers and developers optimise their content. Not following these – either unwittingly or through choice – can have serious consequences on the health of your site.
The algorithms used by companies such as Google and Bing are what ensure that relevant content is displayed to users when they enter a search query. These algorithms are constantly changing and improving which helps increase the relevance of the search results but it also means that their ability to spot Black Hat SEO behaviour is improving.
If penalised by Google, at best you will see your site’s ranking drop. At worst, you could be removed from search results completely. It is possible to regain credibility with Google but it takes a lot of time and work and, in the meantime, potential customers are finding your competitors’ website and you are losing out on business.
It is important that you know what these Black Hat practices are then you can ensure that you avoid them when carrying out any SEO work on your website.
SEO techniques you really want to avoid
Keyword stuffing
Keyword stuffing is a widely used but discredited SEO practice that involves inserting an excessive number of keyword terms into website content, often in an unnatural way. It is employed in the hopes of increasing keyword rank for a website on search engines. Unfortunately, keyword stuffing does not have the desired effect and instead may result in search engine penalties and even blacklisting that can significantly hurt a website’s performance. It can also produce lower quality content which reduces visitors’ interest and engagement with a website, further worsening its keyword rank.
Hidden website content
This is an old one. Keywords which can’t be seen by the human eye but can be read by search engines. This can be as simple as making the text the same colour as the page background or setting the font size to zero. It might seem clever but Google didn’t become so dominant by being played with such a simple trick. As with keyword stuffing this will be penalised and your ranking will suffer.
Paid-for backlinks
This technique involves buying links from other websites with the aim of getting more traffic back to your site. It contravenes Google’s Webmaster Guidelines because it is a form of spam. If Google identifies you’re doing this then you will be penalised for it. This is not to say that backlinks should be avoided. They are essential for building a reputation as a relevant and authoritative source – something which will boost your ranking. But they should be built organically through collaboration with other sites or authors not through purely transactional means.
Spamming blog posts
Everyone has seen this – an article on a website with irrelevant comments containing links back to the writer’s site. One of the benefits of the internet is the sharing of information and advice. Posting worthwhile comments should be encouraged but keep it on topic – you really don’t want to be marked as spam. Similarly, regularly check your own posts to make sure they are not filled with spam – it looks unprofessional and does nothing to enhance your site in Google’s eyes.
Negative SEO
Not all black hat SEO is targeted at the owners site. Perhaps not particularly common, nbegative SEO is a seeks to lower the rankings of competitors by exploiting Google’s guidelines. At its core, it involves sending spammy or low-quality links from illegitimate sites towards someone else’s domain in the hope that they are penalised for it. This practice has diminished over time as search engine algorithms becoming more efficient at identifying and disregarding these malicious backlinks.
Conclusion
We all want our sites to rank as highly as possible – after all no business builds a website with the objective of getting no traffic. SEO is a very powerful marketing tool – it can increase traffic to your website and help build awareness of your brand, but it must be done in a way that doesn’t knowingly or unknowingly contravene the policies of Google, Bing and other search engine companies.
We have a range of SEO packages which will boost your rankings without risking a yellow, or even a red, card from Google. Each package has some level of on-page and off-page optimisation (don’t worry we can explain these terms to you) and we will select the right package to fit your budget and the existing SEO profile of your site. Get in touch and we can run a free SEO audit and start you on the road to SEO stardom.
