What is white and black hat SEO?
White Hat SEO
White hat SEO follows Google guidelines. It involves using high quality content, using relevant keywords for humans, guest posting and answering posts with value on blogs.
Black Hat SEO
Black hat SEO is the process of trying to trick Google to get higher ranking. This can be in the form of keyword stuffing, spamming and much more. It generally involves providing low quality content.
If you use black hat SEO you risk the Google algorithm finding out and your website ranking lower or Google banning your website altogether.
5 Risky Black Hat SEO Tactics You Need To Avoid!
1. Keyword stuffing
This is the process of overusing a keyphrase/keyword, in an effort to trick the search engines. There are times you might unconsciously use keywords too much, so always remember to check. Plugins such as Yoast, automatically check this for you.
2. Hidden Text
This tactic involves hiding text for users and only showing it to search engines in order to rank. The text could be hidden by means of same colour as background, hidden behind image or other elements. Sometimes you might hide text within tabs/accordions, but this is different, as the user can click and view the text. To avoid this ensure what the user sees is exactly the same as what Google sees.
3. Paid Links
In an effort to get backlinks, this tactic involves purchasing backlinks. This is bad practice and will most certainly cause Google to blacklist the site. Google doesn't like links by sponsored content or paid guest posts. You should get your backlinks from genuine places, such as guest blogging, and most importantly creating high-quality content that's link worthy.
4. Comment Spamming
This is process of leaving blog comments with backlinks to your website. Google got wise to this early on. Generally links created from comment sections are typically marked with nofollow HTML tags, so do not get the backlink.
5. Cloaking
This is when user shows one content to search engines and another to users eg sneaky re-directs. it is used in an attempt to rank page based on content created for search engines, while pointing the user to somewhere else. Ensure your website content solves what you are showing to Google, ultimately you should treat Google as a user.
CONCLUSION
Black hat SEO is not a smart strategy, the Google algorithm is wise to it, and your website will be penalised. Thus resulting in your website dropping down search engines or removed from search results completely.
Consequently, this will reduce traffic to your website, and will result in more traffic to your competitors. You will most certainly lose out on business.
SEO done right will bring many advantages to your business, but make sure you adopt a white hat SEO strategy.
