Of course we know that Black Hat is bad and in some ways very unethical. But what exactly are the techniques behind Black Hat?
One of the techniques used is called keyword stuffing, which basically is plugging in as many keywords as possible into an article. But is not effective in terms of rankings because now there are system where they can detect keyword stuffing before the article is submitted. If they do detect this, Google hands out PageRank penalties.
Content Cloaking or better known as “Bait-and-Switch” is using a misleading title or headline to get people to click on a website that actually has no relevant content to what they clicked on. Most often it is to try and sell you something that they are promoting. These Content Cloaking schemes can also lead to penalties.
Last thing is buying links which generated links because of sponsored content or paid posts. Google also discredits these links and ranks them lower on Pagerank. Produce honest and intentional content and the links will come slow but surely.
2 Responses
Thankfully as you were saying Google has gotten much better at detecting and properly handling Black Hat. If a company has to resort to these tactics then it’s a strong sign that the content/product is not very good. Since if it is good, then you shouldn’t have to use these tactics.
It is interesting that black hat SEO does not seem unethical just from the description. Keyword stuffing is like deceiving a robot, but I understand why it is cheating the system. I appreciate the reminder this summary is.