In the late ’90s – early 2000s, SEO was still a pretty new venture. And, while Google and other search engines had rules in place, they were really seen as more of a recommendation.

Anyways, this led to a lot of marketers and SEOs throwing anything at a wall to see what sticks.

Unfortunately, a lot of what stuck was kinda shady.

Nowadays, a lot of the shit people used to do is seen as black hat SEO.

And it’s a huge no-no.

So let’s take a look at black hat practices, what they are and how to avoid them.

Shall we?

Let’s Look At Black Hat SEO

Alright, let’s start with what black hat SEO is.

What Is Black Hat SEO?

In short, black hat SEO is a term that’s used to define practices that are designed to manipulate search engine results.

These practices violate search guidelines, and usually end in heavy penalties – including having websites removed from search results entirely.

Got it? Great!
Let’s get into the practices.

10 Black Hat Practices

This list is gonna break down what the practice is and how it works. Ready? Let’s dive in.

1. Keyword Stuffing

Keyword stuffing is one of the most well-known black hat practices. It involves jamming a keyword into content as much as possible, often at the expense of readability.

Here’s an example if you were to use the “bonsai trees” as a keyword.

See how weird it sounds? Gross.

Moving on.

2. Cloaking

Cloaking is a technique where a user sees one URL, while a search engine sees another. If you clicked on a URL for a website on bonsai trees, but the link takes you to a spam site, that’d be cloaking.

Here’s an example.

Alright. Let’s move on.

3. Hidden Texts & Links

Hidden text and links happen when you take a bunch of text and links and then plonk them onto a website, but you make them the same colour as the website’s background.

It’d look like this.

It’s related to keyword stuffing, but it’s just a lot shadier.

Next.

4. Link Farming

Link farming is a practice that still exists. Basically, somebody sets up a bunch of related websites that link back to the main website in exchange for money.

Here’s a visual aid for you.

All of the sites on the right would have a ton of links pointing to the main website.

Let’s keep going.

5. Doorway Pages

Also known as gateway pages, doorway pages are multiple low-quality pages that are created just to redirect people to a main webpage.

It could look like this.

The difference between doorway pages and link farming is that link farming is designed to inflate a website’s rankings, while doorway pages are designed to direct people from one website to another.

Make sense? Great.

Moving on.

6. Content Spinning

Content spinning (or article spinning) is a practice that entails taking a piece of content and then replicating it multiple times, making small changes so that it doesn’t count as blatant copying.

Here’s an example.

Alrighty. Let’s keep going.

7. Comment Spam

Comment spam involves finding blogs, comment sections, and forums, and just spamming links to your website.

Think something like this.

Let’s move on.

8. Typosquatting

Typosquatting, also known as URL hijacking, is the term used to describe when somebody registers a URL that’s designed to target people who misspell a URL.

Here’s an example.

Great. Let’s continue.

9. Content Scraping

Content scraping is the act of copying content from another website without asking for permission, and then publishing it as your own.

It’d look like this.

Got it? Let’s keep going.

10. Private Blog Networks (PBNs)

PBNs are networks of websites that are exclusively designed to link to another website to improve that site’s ranking.

Google sees it as an attempt to get around the algorithm. So it violates guidelines. Making it black hat.

It’s similar to link farming, with the main difference being that PBNs point to a single site, while link farms could link to multiple sites.

PBNs look kinda like this.

There are a bunch more black hat tactics out there, but trying to list them all would take ages. You can check out Google’s Search Essentials guidelines if you want to find more.

What Happens If You Use Black Hat Practices?

Trying to pull shady shit can have some pretty crazy repercussions. Let’s take a look at a few of ’em.

Algorithmic Penalties

First and foremost, this stuff has an impact on your ranking. Search engine algorithms are way more sophisticated than they used to be, and are really quick to pick up on these practices.

The result?

A tanking in your ranking.

Manual Penalties

A manual penalty is the equivalent of having something on your permanent record. It means that human evaluators looked at your site and determined it needed a penalty.

Why is this bad? Because trying to reverse a manual penalty is like trying to put toothpaste back in a tube. It’s just not gonna happen.

To top it all off, manual penalties can lead to your site being permanently removed from search engines. Yikes.

Damaged Reputation

Black hat practices can have an impact on how others see you, too. And people talk.

I personally wouldn’t ever work with somebody who tried to pull shady shit. Would you?

Legal Hot Water

Some black hat practices (like content scraping) infringe on intellectual property. These violations can end up being taken to lawyers, which is expensive. And won’t turn out well for you.

Overall Shitty User Experience

A lot of black hat practices focus on optimising for search engines over people.

So if visitors find your site and have a bad time, chances are they won’t be back. Because they’ve experienced it first-hand. Good luck trying to convince them.

And if you do engage in it, but decide to change your ways, you’ll be fighting an uphill battle.

I’ve seen people jump ship to completely new sites because trying to fix the old one just wasn’t worth it.

How To Avoid Black Hat Practices

Avoiding shady practices isn’t all that tough. Just use the duck theory:

If it looks like a shitty SEO practice, and it sounds like a shitty SEO practice, chances are that it is a shitty SEO practice.

But if you want some “do’s” as opposed to “don’ts”, here are a few.

Focus On Quality Content

Super simple first point. By focusing on creating engaging, relevant, and unique content, you show search engines that you give a damn, and that you put time and effort in.

Stick To Search Engine Guidelines

All search engines have some documentation that outlines what is and isn’t okay to do. If you want to find them, here’s a quick list of the major search engine guidelines:

• Google Search Essentials
• Bing Webmaster Guidelines
• Yahoo!
• Yandex
• Baidu

Give Users A Good Experience

Don’t wanna resort to shitty practices? Build a good site!

Providing users with a good experience means they stay longer, which means they explore the site more, which means search engines see your site as valuable.

You can check out Google’s PageSpeed Insights to get an idea of your site’s overall speed and load time.

Otherwise, you could always run an SEO audit to see where you could improve.

P.S. – we’ve got a list of affordable SEO tools if you need an SEO audit on a budget.

Stay Updated

Like we said in the beginning, a lot of practices that used to be fine in the old days are considered black hat nowadays.

So it makes sense to stay updated. After all, you never know when that SEO thing you’re doing today could land you in hot water tomorrow.

Resources like Search Engine Journal and Search Engine Land are great for this.

A Conclusion? Yeah, Why Not

Black hat practices are one of those things that probably won’t ever fully disappear.

But at the rate that search engines evolve, it’s clear that getting away with shady shit is becoming increasingly difficult.

In fact, getting away with black hat stuff is so difficult that it’s going to end up costing you less in time and effort to just not do it.

So don’t do it.

Anyways, folks. That’s that for this one.

Hope you enjoyed it. If you did, let me know below.

If you didn’t, also let me know below.

Or don’t.

I can’t tell you what to do.

I’m not Google.