3 Examples of Black Hat SEO Tactics to Steer Clear Of

Since I posted the article on how black hat SEO will destroy your online reputation, many of you have been reaching out to me asking for more information on black hat SEO and what types of tactics it consists of.

Black hat SEO is the practice of using “illegal” (deemed illegal by the search engines) tricks and SEO techniques to bring your website to the forefront of the search engine results pages. Many companies who claim to be SEO experts focus on these black hat techniques rather than white hat techniques – and these are the companies that you absolutely need to steer clear of.

White hat SEO techniques are the long-term SEO strategies that meet the search engine’s criteria for working on your website’s search engine rankings. They’re the legit way to gain in the results pages.

Examples of black hat SEO tactics

The following are 3 commonly used black hat SEO tactics that you absolutely need to stay as far away from as possible.

Keyword stuffing

Keyword stuffing is the act of discretely stuffing your targeted keywords into the pages of your website. There are three main ways that this is usually done:

• Your targeted keywords are hidden within your website’s source code – whether within your meta tags, meta descriptions, comment tags or others
• Your targeted keywords are overly used within your website’s content
• Your targeted keywords are listed and repeated at the bottom of your web pages in a way that is invisible to viewers, but visible to the search engine crawlers. Often these keywords are set to be the same color as the background of the web page so that viewers can’t see them, but the search engines can read them

White hat SEO technique to use instead: What matters to the search engines is that you create quality web content that is relevant and appropriate for your viewers. The best way to avoid this black hat SEO tactic is by focusing solely on creating content for your viewers, rather than for the search engines – and of course not attempting to trick the search engines in any way, for any reason.

Read: The Importance of Strong SEO Pre-Crisis

Doorway / Gateway Pages

Doorway or gateway pages are web pages that are created solely for the search engines. They aren’t accessible or viewable to your website users, but are accessible to the search engine crawlers that search your site. These pages are spammed with your targeted keywords, and are created with the aim of getting your website ranked for those terms.

Note: Search engine crawlers are constantly being enhanced in order to be able to detect these sorts of web pages, rather than be tricked or fooled by them.

Link farming

Link farming is the malpractice of link building. Links are the currency of the search engines. Having other websites link to your website tells Google, Yahoo and Bing that your website is relevant, valuable and worth sharing with others. However, as with anything else, the importance is always quality over quantity. Having 100 links from 100 highly ranked and well recognized websites is much more valuable than having 1,000 links from 1,000 crappy, spammy and irrelevant websites. Link farming is the act of getting as many links as possible from these crappy, spammy and irrelevant third party sites. 

White hat SEO technique to use instead: Link building is one of the most important and valuable steps within your organization’s SEO campaign. It’s the process of creating links from relevant and highly ranked third party websites to your corporate site. This is best done by creating original articles and blog posts that get published to these websites, or by being referred to (and therefore linked to) organically within a web page.

Tip: We all get those email inquiries from people requesting a link exchange. Say no, or simply don’t reply.

Read: Your Online Reputation Management Guide for 2013

The repercussions of black hat SEO

Black hat SEO tactics can will result in not getting indexed within the search engines. Furthermore, your website will risk being labelled as spam or a search engine abuser, which will result in being banned from the search engines all together.

Doing business with “SEO experts” who use black hat SEO tactics comes with a multitude of risks that threaten your organization’s reputation and livelihood. These are unethical companies that understand the search engines and choose to abuse them. I’ve seen too many organizations who have fallen victim to these sorts of companies and, after realizing their unethical ways and attempting to warn others, become the focus of these companies’ malicious attacks. As a result, the victim brands are defamed online and suffer an untold amount of repercussions on their online reputation and bottom line. Trust me when I say that rebuilding your organization’s online reputation after an incident such as this will cost you a lot more headache, heartache, time and money than the cost of working with a legitimate SEO or online reputation management company in the first place.

Read: How Black Hat SEO Will Destroy your Online Reputation

Strong SEO is a must for crisis preparedness

Having an online vulnerability audit conducted on your corporate web presence, and developing and implementing a long-term SEO campaign is a must when it comes to your organization’s crisis preparedness, crisis prevention and online reputation management. Just be sure to do your homework and only work with companies that are honest and upfront with you, have a proven track record of positive success, and ONLY use white hat SEO tactics.