What Is Black Hat SEO? Risks and What to Avoid

1. Keyword Stuffing

As the name suggests, keyword stuffing is a strategy that involves inserting keywords into text in huge quantities, often out of context. Whether it's blogs, the front page, or some other webpage, keyword stuffing spoils a visitor experience and the quality of content on your site in exchange for a temporary increase in rankings.

Keyword stuffing used to be a very common occurrence, but due to the excessive abuse of this strategy, Google updated its algorithm to deal with it.

Today, Google quickly detects this strategy without any problems.

2. Invisible Text

Another black hat SEO strategy that is often used but never brings the desired result is the use of invisible text. Invisible text is background text that is invisible to users but that Google notices.

This strategy is often used for keyword stuffing, but the user does not see this text, so it does not affect his experience on the site.

Of course, today's Google and other search algorithms find this text very easy and are quick to punish anyone who uses it.

3. Doorway and Gateway Pages

Pages that are set up as bait for search engines to pick up links and keywords that aren't entirely relevant and are not related to the site (to which landing pages they mostly lead). Doorway or gateway pages are the names given to these types of pages.

Examples of Doorway and Gateway Pages:

• Creating pages that funnel readers to a single page to target geographically targeted keywords in places where your organization doesn't have a physical presence.
• Rather than meeting a user's demand, pages designed purely to rank for search queries

Users generally do not have a clear way to access these pages unless they know the link to one of these pages.

4. Paid Backlinks

Anyone who works in this industry or knows even a little about it knows that backlinks from authoritative pages are essential for an excellent ranking. However, many people who work in this industry, whether deliberately or unconsciously, fall into the trap of buying backlinks.

On the other hand, dubious SEO agencies primarily use this strategy to fast obtain backlinks to your site and improve your ranks. Building quality backlinks takes a lot of time, and if you notice that the agency you hired comes effortlessly to dozens of backlinks per month, chances are they are using this strategy.

While it may seem like a good approach to quickly get a link to your website in exchange for a fee, this is one of the most devastating activities.

To begin with, when purchasing links, the information that is posted on the website is sometimes of insignificant value to the site's user. With the latest update of algorithms, Google is committed to eradicating such strategies.

5. Spam Comments

When you run your site, you've probably noticed a bunch of comments that mostly have nothing to do with the content you posted, which contains a link to a page. This so-called strategy relies on the use of spam comments, which are often automated with the help of various tools created for this purpose.

Although all of the links in the comments have a no-follow attribute, which implies that Google does not index them, competitors frequently utilize this tactic in black hat SEO attacks. If the comment has nothing to do with your article, it is safest to delete it immediately.

6. Article Spinning

It's not easy to create amazing SEO content, but it can't be denied that it's still one of Google's top three ranking factors.

There are now AI Tools that can generate new, unique articles from a single content by employing synonyms, word order modifications, and other tactics to convert one text to a new one without the concern of Google penalizing you for plagiarism.

However, because technology isn't yet advanced enough to completely replace human writers, these articles usually don't make sense and are easily identified by the Google Algorithm.

To avoid issues caused by poor quality or duplicate pages, take the effort to generate SEO-tailored content.

7. Cloaking And Misleading Redirects

Cloaking is a strategy that involves serving alternate content or URLs to users and search engines, giving them a unique experience.

This is a desperate attempt to rank a page based on material written for search engines while redirecting readers to a different location. Cloaking is a misleading tactic that is against search engine guidelines.

Misleading Redirects

Using redirects is a regular element of SEO. There's nothing wrong with that, it's the best way to ensure that your site is well-organized and accessible to both users and search engine crawlers.

Like cloaking, black hat SEOs utilize clever redirection to trick search engines and display material that differs from what a user sees. A search engine will frequently index the original page while consumers are sent to a different URL.

Sneaky redirection is particularly listed in Google's Webmaster Criteria as a black hat technique that breaches the guidelines. 

How to Protect Yourself From Black Hat SEO Attacks and Strategies?

Now that you are familiar with the most commonly used immoral SEO strategies, it will be easier for you to recognize such strategies on your own, whether you are unknowingly responsible for them or the agency you hired.

We'll show you how to defend yourself against black hat SEO assaults and remove anything from your site that could impact your ranking in the future.

1. Check the Links to Your Site Regularly

We have already mentioned that buying links from sites with low authority can harm your site. Whether these are links provided by an agency you hired or links intentionally posted by your competition to harm you, you must regularly check the links that lead to your site, using tools such as ahrefs.com or semrush.com.

If you find such links, contact the page where they were published and ask the webmaster to remove them. If your messages don't want it or don't respond, you can use a tool called Google Disavow.

2. Pay Attention to the Security of the Website and Social Media Accounts

Hackers who come into possession of your password for accounts on social networks or the website itself can do serious damage in a very short time, sharing inappropriate content, intentionally stuffing keywords on the site, and through many other ways.

That's why it's important to use unique codes that aren't easy to guess. For example, your name, your business name, or the password you were given at the beginning are generally not appropriate passwords. It is necessary to use as many characters, numbers, and characters as possible to make the password harder to break.

3. Set Up Google Alerts for Your Site

Google Alerts is a useful tool to let you know every time someone mentions your brand or name, product name, or other names you have protected.

This will make you notice in time any attempt to abuse the internet, whether it is stolen content or a mention and backlink from a site that does not have high authority.

It is better to prevent than to treat, it refers to SEO, and by noticing black hat SEO activity in time, you will react easier and faster before you harm these strategies to your side.

4. Track Duplicate and Stolen Content

You don't have to worry if other websites try to steal your content because Google easily detects plagiarism and quickly recognizes the original content.

However, if you notice that your ranking has dropped sharply, it's worth checking to see if someone has stolen your content with a tool like Copyscape.

5. Build a Better Reputation for Your Site

If your site enjoys a good reputation on search engines, it will be much harder to influence your rankings using immoral SEO strategies. The more you are visible on the internet, whether through your website, social media, or other major sites that link back to you, the less you will be affected by black hat SEO methods.

However, it is important to monitor your site regularly to react in time to bad links, spam comments, or stolen content. However, if your content is relevant and brings you a lot of traffic, black hat SEO will hardly hurt you. Therefore, this is the best method of protection.

6. Be Careful Who You Hire to Develop Your SEO Strategy

Be careful if you choose a marketing agency without references, that isn't referenced online in a positive or negative light, or that promises amazing results for an even greater price. Always inquire about the agency’s reputation and employee qualifications before you decide to hire an agency to take care of your site.

Don’t hesitate to take as much time as it takes to inquire about them, hear the experiences of others, or find comments about them online. The only way to protect yourself from black hat SEO attacks is to have partners who will help you rank high and build a wall of trust that even the most brutal attacks will not breakthrough.

How To Report Black Hat SEO?

You may report black hat SEO for one of two reasons. Either your website has been hacked, infected with a virus, or has been subjected to a spammy link-building campaign, or you are seeing spammy web results for a competitive phrase that your website is ranking for. You can webspam reports through Google Webmaster Tools. Please use caution when using this tool. Black hat SEO is also the practice of falsely reporting spam on the internet.

If your website has been hacked, viruses, or infected with malware, you should request a malware evaluation once you've removed the harmful code.

If your website is the target of a spammy link-based negative SEO campaign, utilize Google Webmaster Tools' Disavow Links Tool after contacting the webmasters who are referring these links to your site to get them removed.