Common black hat SEO techniques you need to stop using
Black hat search engine optimisation involves using practices that improve your ranking by violating the terms of service that are implemented by Google and other search engines. While black hat SEO may result in improvements in the short-term, this approach can severely hurt your company in the long run. With that in mind, let’s take a look at some of the common black hat techniques that are still used today, which you need to stop using…
Keyword stuffing
There is only one place to begin, and this is with keyword stuffing. Gone are the days whereby stuffing as many keywords into a piece of content was the way forward. Now it is all about quality and originality. If your content does not read naturally, your search engine ranking will only suffer in the end.
Using unrelated keywords
Another black hat technique we often see in regards to keywords is using those that are not related to the content. If you have a piece of content about the best recipes for summer entertaining, and you include the keywords ‘accountant London’ – it is not going to read well, and it is not going to rank well either.
Article spinning
This is a shortcut that is often used to create new and fresh content for the web. While the latter is important, spinning is not the way to go about it. Article spinning involves using software that takes an article and replaces each word with a different synonym. However, when you read your article back, you will see why this is never a good idea. It won’t make any sense!
Buying links
Inbound link building is essential for SEO, yet it needs to be natural. A lot of companies buy link building packages, yet if you have websites pointing to yours that are not relevant to you, this can have a bad impact on your SEO.
Hidden text
Last but not least, this refers to text that search engines can view, but readers cannot. For example, you could simply include white text on a white background so it is not visible. This text will usually be lots of keywords. However, this is just another form of unnatural keyword stuffing, and it won’t work well.