Ritik Jain

If you want to rank a website then a good SEO tactic is a must for it.  

But if you’re new in SEO, it might be hard for you to know which tactics you should or shouldn’t use…  

For you here are some black hat SEO tactics which can harm your website rankings on SERPs. 

10 Black Hat SEO Tactics

1. Paid/Manipulative Backlinks
2. Comment spamming
3. Duplicate content 
4. Article sippining 
5. Clocking
6. Doorway pages
7. Keyword stuffing
8. Invisible text
9. Misleading Redirects 
10. Negative SEO 

Let’s look into it in depth.

1. Paid/Manipulative Backlinks 

Links are one of the most important ranking factors of Google, that’s why everyone wants to build backlinks in huge quantities.

To build backlinks peoples do some tactics such as:

• Excessive reciprocal link building
• Using tools for automated link building 
• Building links on Spammy Directories and Bookmarking sites. 
• Backlink on irrelevant anchor text. 

These techniques are considered spammy, which build low quality backlinks. People have to do some research on link building strategies to build quality backlinks. 

2. Comment Spamming

Blog commenting is a good link building strategy but many people use it in a wrong manner in which they do comment spamming on non related blogs and use irrelevant anchor text to create backlink.  

Some people don’t do it manually, they use tools to sprinkle spam comments across the web.

3. Duplicate Content

Most of the people know that content is king but they don;t know what type of content is king, so they “Copy and paste” content from any website to their own. 

Copy pasting of content in a single domain can be caused by the lack of knowledge or the case of neglect but, copy pasting content from one domain to other is a sign of manipulating search engine ranking which is why it is considered as the worst balck hat SEO Tactic.

4. Article Sippining 

This technique is similar to the duplicate content issue. Duplicating an article is the sign of manipulation of search engines and considered as a serious offence of copyright.   

5. Clocking 

Clocking is a tactic in which a website provides different results on the same URLs to users and a search engine means providing a different result to each.

When a website shows these types of different results then this is a clear attempt to rank a page based on content created for search engines while showing different or unless result to the user. This is one of the major violations of search engine guidelines. 

6. Doorway pages 

A webpage that targets a specific keyword and contains such content which does not belong to any use of the user and act like a gateway to another page is called a doorway page. 

These types of pages are against Google’s guidelines.   

In this a page can be considered as a Doorway page if..

• It targets geographically targeted keywords where the business doesn’t have any physical presence and the page drives users to another page. 
• The page is created to rank a particular keyword and doesn’t meet the users need. 

According to all search engines, the content on a webpage has to be created for the humans, not for the search engines. 

7. Keyword stuffing

Keywords are one of the important google ranking factors. And that’s why people ignore keyword density and use their targeted keyword too often in their webpages which we call keyword stuffing. 

It just does not make sense whenever you read a keyword stuffed with content which creates a bad user experience and that’s why search engines consider it a balck hat SEO tactic. 

8. Invisible Text

This is also like keyword stuffing but user experience is better in this. People create a webpage in which they use their keywords in white font on a white background. 

By doing this, it makes keywords completely invisible to the user which doesn’t harm the user experience but the keywords are completely visible to the search engines and they can detect and index them. 

This way people fool search engines and that’s why it is one of the most popular black hat SEO tactics. 

9. Misleading Redirects

Redirecting is a common part of SEO when you are updating an older page to a new URL or migrating your website and it is the preferred method to ensure your site is reachable by users and search engines.  

But some redirects deceive search engines and or display content to human users that is different from that made available to crawlers. This is one of the major violation of 

Google webmaster guideline. And that’s why it is considered a balck hat SEO tactic. 

10. Negative SEO

You might be thinking that all black hat tactics are done to rank a site. But some people do negative SEO to reduce their competitor’s ranking. 

In this, what people commonly do is, they point a large number of backlinks to their competitor’s site in the hope that they get penalized because of it. But nowadays Google and other search engines are aware of that and they do better ignoring such types of links. 

How to report a Black Hat SEO?

As we know Google and other search engines are improving their AI day by day to prevent such sites from ranking top in the SERPs but there are still some sites that are getting high ranking by using some black hat SEO tactics. 

If you find sites doing violations like buying backlinks, spamming etc then you can file a web spam report.  

We know as a Website owner, it hurts when we see that a website is getting ranked on SERP after using some unethical SEO tactics. 

Every website has to be search engine optimized to get high organic traffic. That’s why many website owners do SEO of their website either by themselves or by hiring a SEO service provider. 

And just like there is a right or wrong way of doing anything, so is it with SEO. 

In the language of SEO we call it Black Hat SEO and White Hat SEO.

What is Black Hat or Unethical SEO?

If you go against search engine’s SEO guidelines and manipulate Search engines to increase your website ranking in SERPs then search engines will consider it as Black hat or Unethical SEO.   

Keywords stuffing, clocking and spam etc are some examples of black hat SEO.

There are many black hat SEO tactics that website owners use  to get faster results but this will benefit them only for the short term.

What is White Hat SEO?

An ethical way of doing SEO is considered as white hat SEO. It takes time to show results but if you do it the right way then you will definitely see a positive impact on your website and it will last for a long period. 

Many Website owners use black hat SEO techniques because it shows results faster than white hat SEO.  

But, if you want betterment of your website then you should avoid it. 

Reasons why you should avoid black hat SEO?

The dark art of the black hat SEO is the wrong way of doing search engine optimization. 

Here are some reasons why you should avoid black hat SEO…

• High risk of getting de-indexed by search engines: A black hat SEO tactic can increase a  website’s spam score which results in penalizing and de-indexing a website by search engines. It can negatively impact your ranking of SERPs.  

• Doesn’t drive long term results: The results from Black hat SEO are temporary because Google or other search engines will affect your organic ranking whenever they detect any unethical practice either by doing core algorithm update or a manual review  
• Poor User Experience: Consistently giving users poor experiences when dealing with your website will cause visitors to perceive your brand negatively and If you read our blog on Google ranking factors then you will know how important factor user experience is. 

A good user experience is a must to get high ranking on SERP. 

So at the end, we recommend you to avoid black hat tactics on your own site. If you want some help to get your site more visible online, you can read our article about 21 inbound link building techniques that don’t violate Google’s Webmaster Guidelines.

So that’s it for this blog, I hope you got to know a little bit about black hat SEO. If you have any questions about it, please feel free to get in touch.

If your website has a High spam score then you must have to reduce it to avoid being penalized or De-indexed by search engines. 

To lower your spam score, you need to stop giving spam signals.

And for that, first of all you should know….

What is Spam Signal?

To get to know about Spam Score of any website, Moz uses some flags and considers them as a spamming signal.

Moz uses 27 different spam scores indicating signals which are correlated with sites that have been penalized or banned. 

If you want to reduce your spam score, here is…

How to reduce Spam Score? 

To reduce your spam score, Here are 4 main spam indicating signals that you should have to avoid on your website.

1. Domain Name:

According to Moz, Your website Domain name is spammy if, 

• It contains many keywords. 
• Long length 
• It contains Numbers and Hyphens

2. Website type:

If your website is of 1 or 2 pages, it should be considered as Spammy. Your website needs to have details like email address and Phone number and it should be using HTTPs. 

3. Website Content

You have to take care of Keywords density in your content . A keyword stuffed content can be considered as a spam signal.

Using words related to Adult and 18+ topics in your content can also be considered as spam signals.

4. Website Links:

A backlink or an Internal Link of your website is considered a spam signal if it is…

• Coming from a spammy website. 
• Using irrelevant Anchor Text. 
• Paid or sponsored. 

These are 4 main spam indicating signals that you have to avoid or remove from your site. 

So that’s it for this blog, I hope you got to know a little bit about spam signals. 

If you have any questions about spam signals, please feel free to get in touch.

If someone tells you the same thing over and over again for their own benefit, then you will feel agitated, right?

And after that if you have some self respect then you must have removed that person from your life. 

If a website does this for link building then search engines will consider it as spamming. And In the same way, search engines de-index or penalize those websites who do link building indiscriminately. 

But how do you know if a website is spammy or not? For that you need to check the Spam Score of that website. 

What is a Spam Score?

Spam Score is an indicator available in the Link Explorer tool developed by MOZ. It determines what % of spammy backlinks a website has. 

If your website has a High spam score, it means you need to pause your link spamming SEO tactic and have to build some quality backlink. 

Links are One of the top 10 most important Google ranking factors. And that’s why you need to take care of your Inbound links quality otherwise, your website could be banned or penalized by Google or other search engines. 

According to Moz. 

A score of 1%-30% is considered a Low Spam Score.

A score of 31%-60% is considered a Medium Spam Score.

A score of 61%-100% is considered a High Spam Score.

If you see a high spam score on a site, it doesn’t mean that the site is spammy. It indicates that you need to do some other quality checks to find out the quality and relevance of that site. 

If you want to get a backlink from another website then you must check the spam score of that website, a backlink from a spammy website is of no use. 

How to check Spam score?

There are many tools present on the web that can help you to find out the spam score or any website. 

You can use Moz extension on Google chrome, it is a free tool that can tell you the exact spam score of any website. 

To access spam score of any website you can also use the Link Explorer tool of Moz, but it is paid. 

Please remember that, every site with a high spam score is not spammy and every website with low spam score is not a quality or relevant website. You need to do some other quality checks to be sure. .   

So that’s it for this blog, I hope you got to know a little bit about spam score. 

If you have any questions about spam score, please feel free to get in touch. 

Keywords are the base of SEO, so finding a right keyword for your website should always be a Priority. 

In this blog, you will get to know about why keywords research is important for SEO and how to do it?

But first, you need to know….

What is keyword research?

Keyword research is a process of finding out what your targeted audience is searching for. By doing keyword research you will get to know about high traffic and low competitive keywords in your niche.

Why is keyword research important?

Keyword research is important because it is the only way to find out what your targeted audience is typing in search engines to get a result. If you do not optimize that keyword on your website, then you may lose your chance to get traffic and I’m sure you wouldn’t want that.

If you are creating content without knowing your target keyword, you might be creating worthless content that nobody is searching for and because of that according to a study, 90.63% of pages are not getting organic traffic on Google.

How to do keyword research?

Keyword research is not all about finding out what your targeted audience is searching for.

While choosing a keyword you have to see some other things like..

1. How hard is it to rank on that keyword? (also known as keyword difficulty).
2. How much traffic will you get from that keyword? 
3. What kind of content do you have to create for that keyword?
4. Is the traffic on that keyword relevant for your website or not?

There are many keyword researching tool present on the web that can help you to find out your 

Potential keywords, but to get the most out of them you have to undergo some manual work. 

Here are some ways that can help, 

1. Look after your “seed” keywords: seed keywords can sprout out other keywords for which you can optimize your website. For example, if you owned a shop like mcdonalds then burger, french fries, fast food might be your seed keywords. 

2. Competitor’s Keywords:  it is obvious that the keywords which your competitors are targeting are also relevant for you, by finding them you can get a list of keywords ready. (you can use any tool for that). 
3. Use Google Keyword Planner: By entering some seed keywords in google keyword planner you can get some relevant keyword ideas. It also shows you the monthly search for each keyword, so that you know how much traffic you can get from that keyword.

After doing this, you will definitely have a list of keywords ready. But remember that finding keywords is not enough for SEO, you have to use them well to get ranked on it. Therefore, Keywords density in your content is also very important. 

Best keyword for you 

There are mainly two types of keywords  i). Long tail keyword and ii). Shot tail keyword. 

Long tail keywords are low competitive and on the other short tail keywords have high volume of traffic. So which one is better for you? For that you have to read our blog about short tail vs long tail keywords. 

That’s it for this blog, hope you enjoyed reading this blog and you must have come to know about keyword density. 

If you have any questions about keywords research in SEO, please feel free to get in touch.