What Is Black Hat SEO? (You Should Avoid This At All Costs!) (2019)

Hello! Welcome o my "What is Black Hat SEO?" review!

Everyday we use the internet for different reasons. One is for searching up for information.

To users, it is very simple. They just type in what they want and once they click "Search", the search engine will give them given various options to choose from.

However, for website creators, it is a bit complicated.

They want to rank up higher in the search results so that web users can easily discover them. To do that, they do SEO.

But not all do it the right way. Some practice the Black Hat SEO.

What is it? Is it illegal? What will happen if you do it?

In this article, we will discuss everything about it. So just sit back and read carefully!

SEO is an acronym of Search Engine Optimization. It is the practice of conditioning one's web pages to be able to attract more traffic or visitors.

Furthermore, with SEO, websites will be able to improve their rankings in the search engine.

If a web page has an excellent SEO work, it can easily be discovered by web users.

Also, it can rank higher on the search results whenever someone searches up a keyword that is related to it.

What do I mean by this?

Let me give you an example. Let's say that you are looking for the best ways to make money online from home.

So, you consult your internet best friend, for the sake of this example, Google.

You type in the keyword, which is "best ways to make money online from home". After you click "Search", Google with provide you with search results.

The results will be ranked depending on how relevant it is to your keyword.

The first result means that it is ranked 1st in the search results of Google on that specific keyword.

So what is the secret behind SEO? How does it work?

Search engines such as Google and Yahoo, will always want to provide their users the best results whenever they search up something.

Their goal is to not only provide results with high quality content, but always the most relevant to what the users are seeking.

With that, search engines will command their "crawlers" to gather all the information that matches the keyword that was provided.

These "crawlers" will go all over the internet. Afterwards, they go back to their search engines.

The information gathered will be brought to the search engines, where they will be indexed.

What follows is the transfer of this index to the algorithm of the search engine. It will sort out the information and rank them from highest to lowest, depending on their relevance to the query.

Websites, especially business websites, need to practice SEO in order for them to have more traffic.

Furthermore, the better the SEO means that businesses will likely increase their chances of growing because their rank in the SERPs is high.

Another one that can really benefit from a great SEO work are affiliate marketers who own websites and blogs.

They need to have traffic to have referrals. And there is nothing better than SEO to do the work.

Affiliate marketing is really profitable once done right and SEO contributes to it.

In SEO, there is a right of doing it and there is a wrong way of doing it.

The Black Hat SEO is the equivalent of "cheating" when it comes to SEO work.

What is it?

Black Hat SEO is the unethical practice of SEO that goes against the rules of search engines to be able to rank higher than the competitions.

It uses shady tactics and methods to be able to trick the search engine algorithms. Furthermore, its aggressive use of SEO techniques is mainly focused on the search engine, rather than on the web user.

I totally not recommend practicing Black Hat SEO. If you do it frequently, your website will end up being banned by the search engines.

The purpose of SEO is to make your websites better and attract more traffic, right? Well, with Black Hat SEO, instead of improving, you will likely to destroy it.

To better understand and fully grasp what Black Hat SEO is, let's talk about its different techniques.

Now, don't get me wrong here. I am sharing these to you, not to encourage you to do it, but to spread awareness and to educate you.

#1 Cloaking

Let's start with one of the oldest method of Black Hat SEO, cloaking.

It is the practice of showing different contents to web users and to the search engines. Websites that do this often lead their visitors to a webpage that contains content that is not even related to what they search up.

However, this won't happen with the search engines as they will be shown a different content to avoid being caught.

Do not be confused though.

You probably encountered websites that change the ads that they display depending on the web user.

Or maybe websites that change the language that the user prefers. Or what about those websites that adjusts its design when viewed on mobile phones?

All of these are acceptable because you are not changing the content. What users and search engine crawlers can see are the same thing.

However, if they are different, then it is cloaking, a black hat SEO technique.

#2 Keyword Stuffing

Let me give you an example paragraph.

Now, when you were reading that, did you notice something? It sounds odd, isn't it?

The paragraph above is an example of keyword stuffing.

Basically, it is the method of overusing keywords to the point that your paragraphs end up sounding bad, leading to a bad quality content. 

This is done as an attempt to be able to rank higher in the search engine results.

Sometimes, websites even put the keywords again and again even there is no need to.

This is not a good idea and you have to avoid it. It will just make your content meaningless and weird.

Do not compromise the quality of your website just for a temporary ranking on the SERPs.

#3 Private Blog Network

Private Blog Networks (PBNs) are authoritative websites created for the purpose of building links for one website.

All of the PBNs owned by a website owner are linked to one website that is aimed to rank higher.

Look at the picture above. A business website that practice this method owns 10 PBNs.

Each of them are linked to the main website. However the the PBNs are not linked in the business website.

Having a network of websites that link to one website, the main one, can lead to higher rankings. However, this is not ethical.

Once you are caught by the search engines, you better expect some consequences.

#4 Paid Links

The video above features one of Google's employees, Matt Cutts. He explains to us what are paid links and how Google thinks of them.

Buying and selling links is a method of manipulating a page's rank. However, Google and other search engines do not like this.

This is considered as a black hat SEO.

Why does this happen? Simply because it is easy.

Buyers can easily buy a link and use it to link to their websites. They won't even have to worry about the content on the link.

Furthermore, the anchor text of the link, which is another huge factor for determining the page rank, is already chosen.

Both of these two reasons are enough to boost the rank of a webpage.

#5 Blog Comment Spam

The name says it all already. This method involves spamming a blog's comment section with the link to your website.

However, nowadays, a few people do this due to the update of Google's algorithm.

Furthermore, most blogs today do not allow people's links on their comment section as "no follow" by default.

That means search engines won't follow the link.

Spamming blogs and forums with your links will likely lead to decreasing the rank of your website.

So you better avoid it.

#6 Invisible Keywords

Keywords are very important when you want to rank up in the SERPs. They are one of the factors that search engines look for in each query people make.

That is why black hat SEO practitioners use this method.

Basically, the put a lot of keywords and its variations on their webpages. However, to avoid its readers seeing them, they choose a font color that blends with the page background.

Even though readers can't see them, search engines can. When it is detected, your webpage will be penalized.

#7 Plagiarized content

Can you believe it? Other website builders have the audacity to copy content from other builders?

All they do is to search for the keyword, go to the first rank and then copy its content.

This method used to help them improve their rankings on the search engines.

Google wasn't that good at detecting copied content. Fortunately, this was already fixed in 2011.

Google's Panda Update led to a better online community wherein black hat SEO practitioners can be detected when copying content from others.

#8 Overuse of Rich Snippets

Rich snippets are good for making your websites stand out from your competitors in the search engine results page.

What it does is that it makes how your webpage appear different in the results page.

Have you ever encountered those webpages in the SERPs wherein it shows its rating?

Take a look at the picture below.

An example of rich snippets is a rating, like the one in the picture. Some black hat SEO practitioners can easily give themselves a 5-star rating from a fake review site.

With this, they can trick the search engines into thinking that they are better than the other websites.

This method is very risky. Furthermore, this method gives inaccurate information to the readers and web users.

#9 Link Farm

Link farm is pretty much similar to Portable Blog Networks.

It is basically a website or a group of websites whose purpose is to link to the website that is trying to rank higher.

Why?

Search engines has a couple of criteria they follow to rank websites. One of them is the amount of links that leads to the website.

Because of this, a link farm was created. This is not recommended because most links used do not contain a good quality content. 

Furthermore, search engines can easily detect link farms now. Doing this will only endanger your website.

#10 Doorway Pages

Doorway pages are another method that involve the use of dummy webpages.

Their purpose is to be a place where search engine crawlers can find targeted keywords for a website. Furthermore, they lead a reader to a website that is not related to what they were searching for.

These pages, which contain keywords can also lead to the main site.

Each day that passes by, search engines work on improving and to detect Black Hat SEO techniques better.

It is a big NO-NO for them. If ever you get caught doing Black Hat SEO techniques, you will face consequences.

Your website will either be penalized of banned.

Banning can happen rarely, however that doesn't mean that it is impossible. When your website gets banned, that means it will completely be deleted from the search engine results pages.

Penalization on the other hand will only lower down the rank of the website practicing Black Hat SEO.

To be able to avoid black hat SEO and leading your website to be penalized or banned, you jut need to do good at SEO.

Instead of doing black hat SEO, you just practice how to use white hat SEO tactics.

What is White Hat SEO?

Well, duh, it is like the protagonist in the SEO world, with the black hat SEO as the antagonist.

On a more serious note, white hat SEO is the practice of using search engine optimization techniques and tactics to improve the rankings of a website.

Pretty much the same as the black hat SEO.

The only difference is that white hat SEO follows the rules and guidelines of search engines.

They do not break anything. Furthermore, the tactics and techniques used are legal and very acceptable.

If an SEO practice can neither be considered as a white hat SEO nor a black hat SEO, chances are, it is a gray hat SEO.

That actually makes sense, right? If you mix color white and color black, the reulst is gray!

Anyways, gray hat SEO does not involve any practices that are against the search engine guidelines.

However, it does feature some unethical methods which may be considered as a black hat SEO in the future if ever search engines discover them.

Thank you so much for reading my "What is Black Hat SEO?" article! I hope you have learned something about it.

If you have comments, suggestions or questions, please feel free to leave them on the comment section.

SEO is very important to website builders, especially to the ones who has an online business as they depend on traffic.

However, it may be challenging. You are competing against a lot of other websites too. So do not expect that you can get higher ranks immediately.

Do not resort to unethical ways of SEO. Yes, it might lead you to rank up faster, but at the price of being penalized, or worse, banned.

SEO is very important to almost every website. Furthermore, affiliate marketers like me, really need it.

Because of that, I really need SEO to be able to rank my webpages higher in the SERPs to have more traffic who can be my referrals.

With no prior knowledge of SEO and how it works, I went through the internet, looking for training programs.

I was fortunate enough to meet Wealthy Affiliates!

It gave me all of the training and tools I needed to become better in affiliate marketing, and of course, to improve my SEO!

With Wealthy Affiliates, I make commissions like these on a daily basis!