How to Build Better Customer Experiences
The Risks Of Using Black Hat Techniques in an SEO Campaign
There are some schools of thought that feel that following the principles of solid SEO practices and generating high-quality content takes too long.
Black hat SEO’s are promoters of this theory and they are ready and willing to take shortcuts that do not exactly follow best Google Webmaster Guidelines.
This philosophy in some ways is understandable as ranking well in search engines does take a lot of time and considerable effort. But taking such a line in your SEO marketing could well lead to penalties from Google.
Google Penalties
- Penguin – Google relies heavily on links from one domain to another to determine a website’s authority. The Penguin update is used to crawl the web to search for any website attempting to falsely affect the information. Offending sites were removed from search results entirely.
- Panda – The Panda was devised to prevent low quality sites’ content from ranking.
If a site is penalised with a Penguin or Panda by Google, the same penalty applies. The loss of your current ranking position in search results and a dramatic dip in your organic traffic.
Black Hat Strategies To Stay Clear Of
The most widely used Black hat strategies used to try and fool Google are: Buying Links, Reciprocal Links, Footer Links, Hidden Links, Comment Spam , Anchor Text Overuse, Malicious Backlinks, Duplicate Content, Keyword Stuffing,and Hidden Content.
Why You Should Not Use These Strategies
- Buying Links
Buying links is against Google’s Webmaster Guidelines, it is easy to pick up a penalty using this strategy. It is hard to get away with buying links without leaving a trail.
- Reciprocal Links
If the reason you are using the two-way link is purely for “link juice” and not for the benefits of both sites, there is a good chance Google will penalise you.
- Hidden Links
There is a simple way to say this, having hidden links is really bad and also sometimes Google crawlers can see a different website to your visitors. This is really a big no-no and is one of the easiest ways to get penalised.
- Comment Spam
Linking back to your site from others comments sections is classed as spam and is not encouraged by Google. Google wants to see quality content, not simply posted in a comment form in a few seconds.
- Duplicate Content
Google does not like to see duplicated content spread over multiple sites. If you are blatantly copying content Google will penalise you.
- Hidden Content
Do not think you will get away with hidden content, Googlebots knows when your website has any hidden text or links. One of Google’s main priorities is user experience, and hidden content definitely counts as bad user experience.
In general it is not good practice to utilise Black hat as a strategy in SEO. It is far better to generate high-value content, follow Google Webmaster Guidelines and generate traffic organically.
Here at Voova Digital we are the professionals in digital marketing, our services include advice on all aspects of utilising best practice techniques as part of your marketing strategy.
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