In the world of search engines, there are many strategies and measures to make your website better for users and search engines. But can the search engines be outwitted by clever tactics? We show you the dark side of SEO and its dangers.
Yes, there are ways to trick search engines. And Blackhat SEO falls precisely into this category. Blackhat SEO are techniques that are designed to cheat search engines and disregard Google’s guidelines.
These techniques are not approved by search engines and may well lead to penalties from Google itself. We at WEVENTURE strongly discourage the use of Blackhat SEO. However, we would like to clarify which strategies fall under Blackhat SEO so that you can avoid them for your website.
Hidden content refers to…you may have guessed it already: Content that ist hidden or disguised. Keywords are made invisible to users on the page, for example a word in blue writing on a blue background. This tactic was especially popular in the early days of search engine optimization in order to include the keyword as often as possible on the page and thus improve the ranking. However, through several updates, Google has now become so smart that it recognizes and penalizes hidden content. At this point, a successful content strategy is clearly better.
Keyword stuffing is extremely unfriendly for both users and search engines. With keyword stuffing, the keyword is packed excessively and in spammy form into the content part of the page. For example, if you run a muffin website and formulate the following text, you are clearly using keyword stuffing: :
>>The muffins from our muffin factory Muffin-Fein are the best muffins of all the muffins available in Löhnsdorf..<<
This is not only frustrating to read, but is also punished by search engines. With the Penguin update in 2012, Google has put a stop to keyword spamming in particular.
The absolutely safest variant to leave the search engine index with your website is the link purchase. If you are aiming to violate Google’s guidelines, you can’t avoid link buying. The special thing about backlinks is that you have to earn them for your own website. Clear structures, strong content and a link building strategy create incentives for other sites to link to your own site quite voluntarily.
Google is clearly against buying backlinks and against link trading. This is a method in which websites with similar content engage in excessive link exchange. Links should have an added value for users and meanwhile Google recognizes very well if many links are set without added value.
Doorway pages are bridge pages. These HTML pages are specially designed and optimized for search engines. The user does not even get to see this page. On these doorway pages, the keywords are incorporated more frequently to improve the ranking. This technique is not clean either. Make sure that the search engine bots always see what your users see.
Just like Harry Potter has his cloak of invisibility, some pages have a similar cloak. Namely, two pages are created under one URL. One page is optimized for search engines, the other for visitors. The page for search engines contains more text and keywords and the other page is often visually optimized. A script then distinguishes whether the visitor is a bot or a human and displays the corresponding page in each case.
If you still haven’t been removed from the index with your own page or have received a warning from Google, you can still try spinning. The interesting thing about spinning is: it started as a Whitehat SEO tactic. You look for a keyword to optimize for and write posts about it. But then, with the help of software, the text is copied and words or passages of text are replaced with similar phrases. So in the end a second article full of synonyms is created, which is still the first article in terms of content. Two articles are published that say the same thing and link to each other.
As has already become evident, these tactics are dishonorable and inferior. We at WEVENTURE definitely advise against the use of Blackhat SEO techniques. On the one hand, there is a great risk of being penalized by Google, on the other hand, all these tactics are not friendly towards users:inside. The goal of a website should be the permanent assurance of high quality content and transparency on the web.
Even if some of the mentioned tactics bring short-term success, it is important to keep in mind that all these measures are never long-term and in case of penalties you always risk losses of traffic, ranking and visibility.
The priority should always be the users of the site. The content should be created for them and their user experience is paramount. Blackhat SEO tactics are aimed only at search engines and significantly detract from the added value of the page..
Which strategies you use for your own website is up to you. But if you want to create a qualitative added value in the long run, it is better to avoid Blackhat SEO tactics. However, it is right to be informed about them so that they can be consciously avoided. You have questions about Blackhat SEO, Whitehat SEO and more? Feel free to write to us!
