Many people want to appear on the first Google search engine results page and they will do whatever it takes to get their website on top. Sometimes people break Google’s guidelines to increase their rank which is known as black bat SEO. Google’s Webmaster Guidelines provide a set of rules that must be followed during any user’s SEO strategy. If Google detects a website using black hat SEO, they may issue a penalty that lowers any website ranking or completely take the website off the search engine. This gamble is not worth the time or money as Google will most likely detect black hat SEO and restart the SEO process. An example of a black hat SEO technique to avoid is the utilization of private blog networks. These are communities of high-authority websites built for link building and promoting sponsored content. These “link farms” exploit Google’s PageRank algorithm and should not be used. Instead, naturally scaling outreach and offering guest blog posts to trusted outlets without paying for PBN access is the right approach. Another example of a popular black hat SEO technique is keyword stuffing. This trick involves putting as many keywords as possible into an article in hopes to increase rank. Luckily, Yoast SEO and All in One SEO can detect keyword stuffing before submitting an article. SEO professionals keep articles from sounding unnatural or “spammy” while aiming for 1-2% of their article to include the keyword they’re hoping to rank for. Black hat SEO has a number of techniques used to cheat ranks and I believe the risk is much greater than the reward. If your content is good enough, it is best to let it reach your target audience naturally.
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It is so interesting to read about all the ways people can manipulate the Google algorithm. I feel like there is such a pressure to have high performing websites that rank well, especially when there are so many websites you are competing against. Sometimes it may feel as though just having good enough content isn’t good enough. The combination of these two factors can lead individuals to Black Hat SEO.
Black Hat SEO is a very important concept for anyone involved with SEO to be aware of. Sometimes, companies get so carried away with wanting to achieve a high ranking on the SERP that they forget that there is a ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ way to do so. I like that you mentioned ‘keyword stuffing’ as a popular Black Hat SEO technique, as many people may not typically see this as an improper SEO method. However, because ‘keyword stuffing’ can make content seem ‘spammy,’ companies who use this Black Hat SEO technique have usually forgotten about creating rich content that best benefits the user.