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Black Hat SEO is a practice that increases a page's rank in search engines through means that violate the search engines' terms of service. In this tutorial, you'll learn:
- What Black Hat SEO is, exactly
- How Black Hat SEO can affect you and your website
- How to achieve Black Hat results without doing anything immoral or jeopardizing your long-term business.
Implementing Black Hat SEO tactics and strategies can get your site banned from search engines, excluding you from the number one traffic referral source on the Internet. At the same time, some Black Hat tactics are remarkably effective. It's important to have a proper understanding of Black Hat SEO and its consequences.
So What Is Black Hat SEO, Anyways?
Black Hat SEO is most commonly defined as a disapproved practice that increases a page's ranking in a search engine result page (SERP [2]). These practices are against the search engine's terms of service and can result in the site being banned from the search engine and affiliate sites.
The term "black hat" originated in Western movies to distinguish the "bad guys" from the "good guys," who wore white hats. Recently, it's used more commonly to describe computer hackers, virus creators, and those who perform unethical actions with computers. Black Hat SEO is no different and includes techniques like the following (a comprehensive list can be found on Google's Support Site [3]):
- Hidden text or hidden links
- Cloaking or sneaky redirects
- Automated Queries
- Load pages with irrelevant keywords
- Creating pages, subdomains, or domains with duplicate content [4]
- Pages with malicious behavior, such as viruses
Why Are Black Hat SEO Practices Important To You?
Black Hat tactics can get your website banned from Google and other search engines.
Though there may be some short term success through increased traffic to your site, that success may very well be short-lived. With hundreds of millions of users searching on Google per day, can you really afford to be de-indexed?
Are Black Hat SEO Techniques FOr You?
It depends: Are you trying to build a long-lasting business?
If your answer is yes, you should probably avoid Black Hat SEO. Rather, you should look for alternative means of improving your search engine rankings.
Instead of automating things that will trick search engines, users, or both, why not leverage software to automate processes that are both Google-approved and that will help you to rank higher through search?
WordStream® offers "White Hat automation software," automating safe, but effective, practices. These practices produce sustainable improvements to your search marketing efforts by increasing Quality Score [5] and growing your keyword list with relevant keywords provided by our Keyword Discovery Tool [6]. WordStream® assists with Search Engine Optimization [7] in various ways, including:
- Automated, Relevant Keyword Suggestion [8]: By including a bit of JavaScript on your website, new keywords [8]that people use to search for your website will automatically flow into your WordSteam keyword database, providing a continuous stream of new keywords and content ideas. The benefits of an SEO keyword tool [9] become even clearer as your campaign grows, helping you to not only bid on the right keywords, but prioritize your site content.
- SEO Workflow Prioritization [10]: By analyzing your keywords [11] and keyword groups by popularity or visits generated, WordStream suggests where changes will be most productive.
- Search-Friendly Information Architecture [12]: By grouping your keywords by relevance [13], WordStream organizes your keywords into search-friendly tree structure, as shown below, which you can easily apply to your site's structure
In addition to improving organic search results, WordStream offers similar guideline-approved automation options to help improve your PPC campaigns [14] or PPC affiliate marketing [15] and lower your costs.
If you are looking to grow your business while minimizing risks, you can: