Black Hat SEO

 

If you engage in black hat SEO, you risk being subjected to a manual action by Google that can punish your site. Google specifically discourages black SEO tactics. It says, “Avoid tricks intended to improve search engine rankings.”

​

Examples of Black Hat SEO Strategies

​

1. Buying backlinks – You are not supposed to pay other websites to get backlinks to your site. You need to earn the backlinks by wanting other websites to link to your site for their own organic or natural reasons.

2. Keyword stuffing – You should refrain from jamming keywords into a page.

3. Duplicate content – You should avoid duplicate content. Instead, you should want every page on your website to have original content.

4. Forum spam – You should avoid getting backlinks to your site by spamming forums.

5. Competitor attacks – You should refrain from creating low-quality, spammy backlinks to your competitor's site instead of your own.

6. Hidden text – You should avoid putting invisible or hidden text on your website that only search engines can view, but your site visitors can’t.

​

White Hat SEO Strategies

​

To avoid getting penalized by Google, you should focus on the following white hat strategies:

1. Create high-quality content – Make the best content that you can possibly create.

2. Provide a great experience to your users – Make your website easy to use and navigate, trustworthy, etc.

3. Have natural backlinks to your site – You can attract backlinks by doing the two things above. By creating high-quality content and providing a great user experience, other sites will link to you naturally.

4. Have good architecture – This means Google can easily crawl your site. Also, there's a lot of interlinking. Make sure your website is well-organized. There should be a proper use of folder structures.

​