There are always two sides to the coin. Similarly, if there’s a right way of doing something their also the wrong way. Although you can get what you want faster by using the wrong way, it’s only a matter of time before you get caught and lose the thing for good. It’s the same in the digital world. You can rank your site on the search engine by following the rules of the search engines and using techniques that support them. This way of getting a ranking is known as white hat SEO.
But it isn’t the only way to rank your site. Like a coin SEO also has two sides. While white hat SEO techniques follow the rule of the search engines and rank your site accordingly, some techniques may be able to give you a good ranking faster but they don’t comply to search engines algorithms, some even go against them which may result in your site being permanently removed from the search engine ranking. These techniques are known as back hat SEO techniques.
Many try to use black hat SEO techniques and impress clients to earn from home online through SEO-related work. And create a steady income funnel through it. But is it right? In my opinion, it’s a no! So, let’s talk about some back hat SEO techniques and why should we avoid them.
Keyword Stuffing
We all know the first thing we want when we do SEO is to get our site to be ranked on the first page of the SERP for our targeted keywords. For we add contents that contain this keyword and allow search engine bots to recognize them and rank us accordingly. By using keyword stuffing we populate our content with these keywords whether they are relevant to the content or understandable by users. Its only purpose is to let the bots know to rank you for these keywords.
Well, you might think that by doing this your keywords will be indexed faster and more users will find and visit your site for this. But there’s one problem since now most of your content is not user readability friend the user will get agitated and leave the site which will cause a spike in bounce rate. On the other hand, if search engines realize that you are using such a technique then you might even get penalized for it.
Auto-generated backlinks
To generate quality backlinks there’s a lot of work behind it. Like researching competitors, emailing influencers on your field, pitching high-quality content ideas and drafts, etc., all these are done to produce such quality backlinks. However, some tools and sites can generate backlinks for you for a certain amount. But here the thing the generated backlinks might be in high quantity their quality is quite poor. And not only that after a certain amount of time a lot of them become broken links. Which causes a negative impact not only on your site’s ranking but also your brand image.
Cloaking
Another famous and highly risky black hat SEO technique, as its name implies mainly cloaked your illegal practices from the search engine and user. Like showing the search engine bots texts stuffed with keywords while the user sees and carousel with images. This is the reason it’s called cloaking. While you might think that it’s just a little harmless way to increase your ranking it’s illegal, hackers also use such a method making owners unable to track them. And if the search engine catches you using clocking then your site might be permanently removed from the search engine index.
Invisible Text
As the name indicates in this method the user doesn’t see the stuffed text because it’s styled in a way that it becomes invisible. Like making the color the same as the background. This way it’s well hidden from the user but not from the bots. This may look harmless but if the search engines are updating their algorithms regularly for detecting such incidents you might have to pay a high price for it.
Summary
Although black hat techniques may look harmless at times and can get you to a higher ranking faster there is a high risk to it. And with updating of algorithms in search engines, they are getting stricter with penalties as well. So for the well-being and continuation of your site on the web, it’s best to avoid using such techniques.
