10 Black Hat SEO Techniques [Ultimate Guide 2021]

Black Hat SEO Techniques refers to those SEO techniques that increase the ranking of a website or a web page by violating the search engine guidelines.

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What is Black Hat SEO?

It’s human nature to look for shortcuts, but do the alternatives always ensure success? It’s a question that you should ask yourself. You might be successful, but trust me, that success can’t stand for long.

Shortcuts are useful, but they don’t guarantee a long term effect. My friend, that’s what black hat SEO is, just an alternative to increasing the ranking of the website. To make it clear, let me tell you that Black hat SEO is not a type of SEO, but it is a technique of SEO.

Black Hat SEO vs White Hat SEO

Black hat SEO or black label SEO gives the result soon, but that is for a shorter time. Moreover, the investment is much more as compared to white hat SEO.

White hat SEO is the right, or you can say the ethical type of SEO. It includes activities like unique and relevant content, keyword research, infographic images, link building, faster loading web pages, on-page SEO, technical SEO, and a lot more. White hat SEO ensures success for long term effects. You can implement the white hat SEO strategies without any hesitation or doubt.

The technology is smart, and Google Penguin is even more intelligent. It can track in a fraction of time if you have done something that has violated Google’s guidelines. Also, you are penalized for this by Google Penguin. Your website might even get banned forever from the internet.

10 Black Hat SEO Techniques:

If you are following a strategy that you think can increase the ranking of a website, but it’s doing no good to the user. You are likely to fall in trouble because Google considers this as an act of black hat SEO. Therefore, you need to know what are black hat SEO techniques can cause great trouble to your website.

Some of the well-known Black Hat SEO tactics are below:

1. Duplicate Content

Content duplicity is the biggest crime in the eyes of Google. It considers the duplicate content of no use because the content is already on the internet on some websites. Therefore, what’s the need to upload it again?

Plagiarism is the duplicity of content. It can be below 5% because there is a group of words like “On the other hand,” which another website might also have used. And these words are not copied words. Instead, they are common words that can be considered fewer than 5% plagiarism.

If you are looking for a tool that can tell you whether your content is duplicate or not, you can use Grammarly or Duplichecker tool. It allows you to check for plagiarism and other grammar mistakes too. Duplichecker is one of the best free SEO tools.

2. Content Spinning

Content spinning refers to the creation of a new article from an existing article by changing some words, groups of phrases, sentences, paragraphs, or by changing the format or sequence of the items to make it look new. Even after changing so many contents, there is the right amount of plagiarism because such articles suffer from duplicate content penalties.

Article spinning or content spinning can be manual or automated. Manual content spinning refers to changing the article on your own by reading it from top to bottom. In contrast, in automatic article spinning, you use tools to spin or modify the content.

Good content is the key to better ranking. Don’t spoil it by indulging in black hat SEO techniques.

3. Keyword Stuffing

Keyword stuffing refers to mentioning relevant as well as irrelevant keywords in every sentence. Irrelevant keywords do nothing but create a bad user experience, and the user closes your site after a couple of seconds. Moreover, some keywords can rank your web page for several queries whose solution is not even in the content.

According to Google, keyword stuffing refers to the repetition of the same words or phrases which compromise the readability. Repeated keywords make the readability gibberish.

You can take the help of the keyword research tools i.e AnswerThePublic, Keyword Everywhere, Ubbersuggest. And find the most searched keywords, but mentioning them all in a single post is not at all a good idea.

4. Cloaking

The most natural explanation is that cloaking is presenting one piece of content to the search engine and a different part to the user. Many spam websites perform cloaking to rank themselves for a variety of keywords without getting caught by the Googlebot.   

An example of cloaking is, suppose a user searches for “types of fishes” and he lands on a page with prohibited content or pornography.

You can change the size of the web page for mobile users, translate the page into a different language for ease in user readability, or you can also change the advertisements from time to time. But changing the content for the search crawlers is strictly not acceptable by anyone. Risk your website and get banned by performing cloaking.

To find out whether your content is acceptable or not, firstly ask yourself, then search for the particular keyword and read the top ten search results. I hope you got your answer.

5. Paid Links

Link building (an off-page SEO technique) is the most significant factor for the site’s ranking. That’s why people involve in activities like buying and selling links, but Google doesn’t allow it. Instead, Google can penalize your website for irrelevant links.

Google has already stated on their website that any paid link which a site has used to increase the page can consider as violating the Google webmaster guidelines. Google can penalize both the parties who have to buy or sell the backlinks either in exchange or selling.

Many people make a deal with other websites to give a backlink on each other’s sites. Getting a link from a website or giving them a link for irrelevant or low-quality content is known as link farming.

You can link to or request the websites with high-quality, relevant content to give you a backlink. It comes under the white hat SEO and is indeed ethical. The connection between the two sites has to be logical and beneficial for the sake of the user.

6. Private Blog Networks (PBN)

PBN (Private Blog Networks) is a group of websites that contact each other and forms a guest posting network. They post on each other’s blogs equally to get a backlink to their website. And they only approve the requests of those websites which are in their Private Blog Networks (PBN).

It is mostly created by expired domains that have many backlinks. People purchase domains that expire and change the backlinks to the backlinks of their websites and get the SEO credit as well as traffic by linking the “Dofollow” backlink. PBNs offer a large number of high authority backlinks with less effort.

Google algorithm takes a little time but tracks the PBNs and highly penalize the website for creating backlinks illegally.

7. Hidden Text or Links

It means putting a text or a link somewhere in the middle or bottom of the web page and hiding it with a color like grey, white, or yellow or a color same as the background that can’t be seen by the search engine.

Google has mentioned in its blog that locating text behind the images, using CSS to position the text of the screen, and setting the font size of the hidden link or text as zero violates the guidelines of Google.

An unethical person uses this technique to stuff irrelevant keywords and links in the content that the user or the search engine doesn’t notice.

8. Unnatural & Irrelevant Linking

As already mentioned, that link building is essential. Adding false and irrelevant links in your content is also a black hat SEO technique. Adding links to other web pages of your website is good, but it should be relevant. Even if to which you have given a link is a high-quality authority link but is not related to the content can violate the search engine guidelines.

If your content is about What SEO is? Can you add a link to your content titled as to how to start a blog? Of course not, you can’t. It is unnecessary, or you can say an irrelevant link.

Add links that are relevant and holds some value. If your content is not giving all the details, you can add a related link to some other web page or a website.

9. Spam Comments

Spam comments are those comments on a blog post in which the one who comments add a link to his/her website. Many people use this black hat SEO technique to get the links. Though these links are “Nofollow,” that is, they do not give any SEO credit. Still, they help in bringing traffic to the website.

Comments like do visit my website for better details with a link are spam comments. Earlier the search engine counts these links, but now Google updated algorithm penguin has started discounting these links. Though they keep a check on how much traffic is coming from blog comments.

3 to 4 comments with links are okay, but hundreds of spam comments on different websites can cause great trouble, and you might even face some penalty from Google. Blog commenting is a wrong or spammy way of getting links to your website, which is not at all allowed by the Google search engine.

Besides, even your blog post should not contain spam comments because Googlebot counts the spam comments. You can use the Anti-spam tools and plugins (such as Akismet) for detecting and removing such comments from your blog.

10. Reporting a Competitor

Reporting false to your competitor is cheap as well as a risky way of trying to top the charts. If your website is two years old and your competitor’s site is eight years old, and his content and ranking are much better than yours. Do you think Google considers the reporting complaint of yours? Instead, it recognizes you as wrong.

Do not report your competitor unnecessary because even in SEO, there are ethics, and as an honest person, you should not clear people out of your way to snatch their position. If you have the guts, you should take it on your own.

Why Should You Avoid Black Hat SEO Technique?

After reading the above mentioned black hat SEO technique, you shouldn’t be thinking about why you should avoid black hat SEO. Even if you do, let me tell you that black hat SEO can do nothing but takes you to the path of penalties.

Black hat SEO violates the Google webmaster guidelines, which means it is strictly against the rules. And anything performed against the standards comes with devastating effects. Google penalizes your website for involving in black hat SEO. As a result of this penalty, your website can lose its ranking and its position in the search results.

Black Hat SEO techniques or tactics can lead to the ban of your website from Google.

Search engines have become smart these days, and it is impossible to do black hat SEO and stop your website from getting caught. Google might not find you immediately, but definitely after some time.

Should I Hire Someone for Black Hat SEO Services?

Of course not, the answer is a big NO. You should never hire someone to perform the black hat SEO services for your website.

If you are looking for a short-term effect (though I believe it’s not correct), then you can consider the black hat SEO service. On the safer side, I suggest you involve neither nor hire someone to participate in the black hat SEO.

Conclusion

There are many black hat SEO techniques though I have mentioned the most common ones. I suggest you all that instead of looking for shortcuts to increase the ranking of your site, invest your time to do white hat SEO.

Have you ever got involved in the black hat SEO strategy intentionally or unintentionally? Do let me know in the comment section.

Originally published Jan 3, 2020, updated Jan 24, 2021