Black hat SEO: what is it and why does Google penalize it?
Posted: Wed Dec 11, 2024 4:13 am
A good SEO expert knows which techniques are valid (and which are not) when it comes to positioning a company or business's website at the top of Google and the main search engines. Or, if you have taken the SEO and SEM Course at the University, you are probably also aware of this.
Even so, we have prepared this article to tell you about this dark side of SEO and why it is advisable to avoid it. Find out everything that has to do with black hat SEO here.
What is black hat SEO?
In the world of digital marketing, black hat SEO advertising database refers to web positioning techniques that are based on deceiving search engines to easily climb positions .
While black hat SEO is characterized by the fact that it can achieve short-term results, it is not worth it in the long run. The reason is simple: if a search engine detects that we are trying to “cheat” it, we run the risk of having our website penalized and suffering the consequences. This would lead to the opposite effect and would harm the company’s marketing objectives.
Of course, apart from the actions that we can take, black hat SEO also includes the bad practices that other people (competitors, hackers , etc.) carry out to “attack” a website with the intention of making it drastically lose the traffic it had until then.
How can black hat SEO affect a business?
As we mentioned earlier, not complying with Google's guidelines (we mention this search engine because, after all, it is the most used) can lead to a series of sanctions for the website of a company or organization. These will vary depending on the severity of the violation committed.
In any case, some of the most common negative consequences of applying black hat SEO are:
Negative impact on Google search results and loss of visibility: When a website loses traffic and visibility, the company's conversions and revenue will typically follow suit and suffer as well.
No long-term results: While it may take Google a while to detect that black hat SEO techniques have been applied to a website, a drop in organic search results will be inevitable once it notices. It doesn't matter if the page appeared in the SERPs or how well positioned it was.
Poor user experience: Black hat SEO is typically designed to optimize a site for search engines rather than to provide better content and experience to users.
Google ban.
Most common black hat SEO techniques
Let's look at some of the SEO techniques that are considered less "ethical" when it comes to positioning a page in search engines:
Structured data abuse: This involves providing inaccurate information about how the content of a page should be displayed in order to deceive search engines and users.
Blog spam ( comment spam ): This bad practice refers to including links to a website through comments on other blog posts.
Cloaking: This is the process of displaying a very well-optimized page to web crawlers, but unreadable to a human, and “covering” it with another page aimed at users, but not crawlable in search engines.
Hidden content: This involves hiding relevant keywords and links in a piece of content, either by using the same background color as the page, reducing the font size to zero, or rearranging text off-page via CSS.
Paid links: This involves asking other websites to add links that point to our page in exchange for a reward (money, discounts on the purchase of our products or services, etc.).
Link farms : This is the name given to the set of pages that resort to the massive exchange of links with the aim of improving the page rank of all the linked websites.
Spinning: This black hat SEO techniqueis based on quickly rewriting or changing a few words in an existing text, so that it appears different.
Negative SEO: This is used to sabotage the search rankings of a competitor's website through tactics such as hacking, data theft ( phishing ), page hijacking , creating toxic links pointing to the page, or inserting negative reviews about the company on review platforms, among others.
Even so, we have prepared this article to tell you about this dark side of SEO and why it is advisable to avoid it. Find out everything that has to do with black hat SEO here.
What is black hat SEO?
In the world of digital marketing, black hat SEO advertising database refers to web positioning techniques that are based on deceiving search engines to easily climb positions .
While black hat SEO is characterized by the fact that it can achieve short-term results, it is not worth it in the long run. The reason is simple: if a search engine detects that we are trying to “cheat” it, we run the risk of having our website penalized and suffering the consequences. This would lead to the opposite effect and would harm the company’s marketing objectives.
Of course, apart from the actions that we can take, black hat SEO also includes the bad practices that other people (competitors, hackers , etc.) carry out to “attack” a website with the intention of making it drastically lose the traffic it had until then.
How can black hat SEO affect a business?
As we mentioned earlier, not complying with Google's guidelines (we mention this search engine because, after all, it is the most used) can lead to a series of sanctions for the website of a company or organization. These will vary depending on the severity of the violation committed.
In any case, some of the most common negative consequences of applying black hat SEO are:
Negative impact on Google search results and loss of visibility: When a website loses traffic and visibility, the company's conversions and revenue will typically follow suit and suffer as well.
No long-term results: While it may take Google a while to detect that black hat SEO techniques have been applied to a website, a drop in organic search results will be inevitable once it notices. It doesn't matter if the page appeared in the SERPs or how well positioned it was.
Poor user experience: Black hat SEO is typically designed to optimize a site for search engines rather than to provide better content and experience to users.
Google ban.
Most common black hat SEO techniques
Let's look at some of the SEO techniques that are considered less "ethical" when it comes to positioning a page in search engines:
Structured data abuse: This involves providing inaccurate information about how the content of a page should be displayed in order to deceive search engines and users.
Blog spam ( comment spam ): This bad practice refers to including links to a website through comments on other blog posts.
Cloaking: This is the process of displaying a very well-optimized page to web crawlers, but unreadable to a human, and “covering” it with another page aimed at users, but not crawlable in search engines.
Hidden content: This involves hiding relevant keywords and links in a piece of content, either by using the same background color as the page, reducing the font size to zero, or rearranging text off-page via CSS.
Paid links: This involves asking other websites to add links that point to our page in exchange for a reward (money, discounts on the purchase of our products or services, etc.).
Link farms : This is the name given to the set of pages that resort to the massive exchange of links with the aim of improving the page rank of all the linked websites.
Spinning: This black hat SEO techniqueis based on quickly rewriting or changing a few words in an existing text, so that it appears different.
Negative SEO: This is used to sabotage the search rankings of a competitor's website through tactics such as hacking, data theft ( phishing ), page hijacking , creating toxic links pointing to the page, or inserting negative reviews about the company on review platforms, among others.