Black Hat SEO: The Dark Side of Search
Hello everyone,
Please, beware of black hat SEO practices. You will be in deep doodoo with Google if you even go near black hat tactics.
Before I explain, here's some definitions:
What is SEO?
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. It is the practice of increasing the quantity and quality of traffic to your website through organic search engines like Google and Ask Jeeves.
What is White Hat SEO?
White Hat SEO is any practice that improves your rankings while maintaining the integrity of your website and staying within the search engines' terms of service.
What is Black Hat SEO?
Black Hat SEO is any SEO practice that improves your rankings while NOT maintaining the integrity of your website and NOT staying within the search engines' terms of service.
DON'T USE BLACK HAT SEO! BE ETHICAL!
Once you understand Google's algorithms, you will know exactly how to game them so you can reach the top of the search engines with ease. And Black Hat SEO will help you do it even faster!
Tempting, right? I will tell you its not worth it. If Google finds out, it will immediately apply a filter to your site that will prevent it from ever ranking.
In other words, your site will be removed from search permanently.
Anyone remember the good ole days when you could just slap a bunch on words on the page, and set the color to white so no one could see the words?
Those were the days, huh? @shanefromfargo
It's worth adding that there's a third strategy often used called Gray Hat SEO. Gray Hats operate in the blurred line between White and Black. They skirt the line enough to get ahead without crossing it enough to get penalized. It's a risky game but some of what they do aren't necessarily bad practices.
And it's dangerous too because if Google changes their mind and suddenly thinks that the one thing you're doing that's grey hat seo is not okay anymore...then you're automatically into black hat seo territory! Is there any blog that lists all of the black hat SEO tactics? so you can know whether what you're doing is good or bad!
Yea if you're going to do gray hat, you need to be on top of the latest trends. Search Engine Roundtable is a good source for getting insights into the latest algorithm updates.
I hesitate to post it but to answer your question, BlackHatWorld is a popular forum and they have a sticky of black hat tactics and tools. This forum is often mentioned in the Search Engine Roundtable articles about algo updates.
Thanks for posting this! This is extremely useful for people that have no clue about SEO and should be common knowledge in order NOT to get scammed by various SEO freelancers that use black-hat techniques for short-term gains, but in the long-run make a lot of damage to the site.
Oh wow, I'm absolutely disgusted that this isn't common knowledge & wisdom.
If one of you thinks white-hat techniques "aren't good enough," you need to take a deep look inside & ask yourself why NO ONE IS SHARING YOUR PRODUCT.
Stop trying to jam a square peg through a round hole.
This 1,000,000x.
Did you ever do SEO professionally ? I believe not.
If you stay strictly you within Google guidelines you won't be very successful.
Yes, be ethical, but following guidelines of a company that just want you to BUY MORE ADS instead of allowing your budget to SEO is not ethical - it's dumb.
Your interests are not aligned with those of Google. Stay legal, stay ethical with other webmasters (eg. hack websites for links is a no-no) but do not follow blindly what a random company says about what you should or shouldn't do on the internet.
And no, you won't be banned from Google if you do it properly and stay reasonable.
Pretty much disagree with what you're saying.
And the line between white hat - grey hat - black hat SEO is so thin that it does not make things crystal clear at all.
One idea: if you have to even ask if something is grey- or black-hat, you're probably doing it wrong.
A lot of people are just scraping for shortcuts & running around with hacks for short-term algorithms flaws. These search engines are trying to grab useful info. I'd rather start with simply providing genuinely useful info.
Well, yes and no.
A lot of people, including OP as far as I understand, defines "black hat" as "everything that is not recommended by Google guidelines". If you define it that way, no you're not 'probably doing it wrong'.
By this definition, building links is black hat, yet that's basically SEO 101 and you're doing it RIGHT by building links.
If you take another definition though like "black hat seo is doing illegal things to gain advantage in the SERPs" like hacking websites to add links or whatever, I do agree that if you have to ask yourself if it's illegal or not, yeah, it probably is illegal or unethical or both. And I wouldn't do it. But then you miss a lot of "technical hacks" (eg. tricks, not piracy) that "sounds like" blackhat but isn't in our definition... And things get messy again.
But then you remember you don't have to put SEO practices in boxes likes "whitehat-greyhat-blackhat" because it does not make much sense (as we've just seen), so instead just try to make your site #1 without doing shady stuff but without being constrained by some Google rules that are not in your interest either.
Nobody:
"is anything not explicitly recommended by Google black-hat?"
Black-hat has always been the obvious threshold for illegal activity
I'm here to make great products to make money, not the other way around
Genius got banned from Google for doing this! It set them back in a HUGE way.
https://www.alleywatch.com/2014/03/how-not-to-get-banned-from-google-like-rap-genius-and-be-awesome-at/
Great example. 10 day ban, interesting.
I'm so disappointed this post is not actually talking about black hat strategies.
It contains no information.
you thought i was gonna reveal some secrets @Bipbop? cuz i can do that
Yes please!! 😍 I want to learn how to bend the rules. I don't care about being called a bad boy by Google.
There's no way to grow without backlinks. Buying backlinks via sponsored posts or guest posts are considered black hat, but in reality, it is what everyone does and it can't be penalized. There's no way of telling if the link from Forbes has been paid for or not. If the author of the site included the link on its own will or did he receive money from it.
Thus Google can't penalize a site for that.
Yes, there are spammy PBN's which are easy to spot, which people use to influence SERP's fast. Those are not recommended. But even PBN's can be done the right and safe way.
Sorry, not agree at all
Seo and ranking is so complex that white hat, grey hat, black hat, it doesn't matter. Real question is : how to growth a website.
If you are building a website/blog/niche to get $$, you'll earn much more money by using blackhat strategies during few months, compare to using white strategies for years.
Interesting perspective @Tim12. I am curious to hear your experience with making quick money from blackhat strategies. How did you get started?
The general blackhat strategies are the same than years ago, but needs to add a twist (regarding the social network to use, for example, tiktok now...)
Even dirty backlinking will work, pushing your website in top result for few weeks, before getting sanctioned by google. But during those weeks, you earn many $$