How Black Hat SEO is affecting your business

Search Engine Optimization(SEO) is the process of optimizing the content on your website to rank higher in search engines like google, bing, yahoo etc. Higher rank guarantees better visibility for your business since only a minuscule percentage of users check the pages beyond the first, on any keyword search on google. The ranking fluctuates based on ever-evolving algorithms used by the search engines. These algorithms usually take into account, many known factors like the availability of relevant keywords, useful links and original content on the website among other factors. The Quick method to rise in ranking by trying to fool the search engines without considering the user experience is called Black Hat SEO.

It is an illegal practice that usually provides short-term growth in the website SEO but once flagged by the search engines you will have to face severe penalties including being completely removed from the search engine result page(SERP). All of this sounds really bad and is frowned upon, but there is a small chance that you are doing it unknowingly. Listed below are common illicit practices that promise undue SEO benefits :

Keyword Stuffing

It refers to including relevant keywords excessively on your website to boost SEO without adding any real value to the content. Even worse is the usage of keywords totally unrelated to your industry. Using most searched words repeatedly makes the content uninteresting for the readers but helps in mapping on SERP. Basically, these are content written to lure the search engine crawlers rather than the actual users.

Article Spinning/Content duplication:

It refers to copying the article content from another website and adding it to your own website. Since copy-pasted contents started getting flagged easily, people started changing the words (using synonyms) and sharing to avoid detection. The whole point of ranking the websites is to ensure that the users get different opinions relevant to their query. Without any additional original content, it will feel as though they get to read the same content twice.

Cloaking

It is the practice of writing two different content, one for fooling the SEO crawlers and the other for the actual human users. An example would be Serving a page of HTML text to search engines while showing a page of images to users

Clickbait

Nothing is worse than clicking an interesting headline only to find that actual content is either misleading or vaguely inspiring. Enticing headings like “You won’t believe” or “Shocking details revealed” etc are usually click baits looking to generate their revenue per click.

Doorway and Gateway Pages

Adding random links on the website which lead the user to another webpage which is having high keyword density is a practice that is harder to detect but not impossible. The second webpage may or may not be related to the query of the user.

Link Selling/Buying:

Trading links in exchange for money, goods, or posts that contain links are deemed illegal and will be flagged for malpractice. Also, hidden links(links added with zero size font or background colour camouflaged texts) are also against google standards.

With research being done specifically on improving the customer experience, such malpractices are bound to be found and penalized including lower rankings and getting de-indexed altogether from the SERP. The end does not justify the means in this case as it is counterproductive in the long run.
InterSmart Solutions is an SEO company in Kochi, which deals only in white SEO and can help you to modify your website to suit google standards and thereby boost your website rankings for good.