Black Hat SEO is a practice that aims to get a site’s ranking higher in the search results, in an unethical way. Black hat techniques include keyword stuffing, cloaking, using private link networks, and more.
There is an ethical way to appear higher in the SERP page, but black hat SEO is not the solution. Instead of solving for the user you are trying to reach, black hat SEO uses shady tactics to get you to the top quicker and easier. Although you may think black hat SEO will help you in the long run, it will actually damage your online presence long term.
There is another term called white hat SEO, which is pretty much the opposite of black hat SEO. It is a “more ethical way of doing SEO by creating quality content and a good user experience.” It is important to remember that the main goal of SEO is to find your primary user and bring them a better experience. If you use black hat SEO, the main goal of helping your user becomes gone.
In an article I read, there was an example where JC Penney used black hat SEO to rank higher around the holiday season. Over 2,000 backlinks were discovered, which contained anchor text with the keywords J.C. Penney wanted to rank for on search engines. Many of the links had no relevance to J.C. Penney. Their actions resulted in Google dropping them down in the SERP for many terms that were relevant to them, such as “living room furniture”. This example shows the lasting effects black hat SEO will have for your business.
Black hat SEO is an unethical way of raising your search ranking for various keywords. If your business uses any of the many tactics within black hat SEO, worse and lasting results will come with it. It is better to use white hat SEO in your SEO efforts.
Source: https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/black-hat-seo
3 Responses
Everyone should know about white hat and black hat SEO so they know what and what not to do on their website. Black hat SEO is more focused on short-term gain, where white hat SEO considers long-term results and real views from users. I also like the practical example of J.C. Penny and it shows what can happen if you’re not careful about what strategies you use.
Wow, yet another nail in the coffin for J.C. Penny. It blows my mind that a company of that size and stature would resort to such measures. In some ways, this represents a larger issue in society: there’s no easy way to the top. Instead, companies should to the right thing and focus on their long-term game.
My guessing is that Penny did this black hat wizardry because of shareholder pressure. It’s amazing the amount of unethical things shareholder pressure can do to a company. Unfortunately, like in many cases of shareholder pressure, short term gains = long term consequences.
It’s always interesting to see media ethics argued about. It’s such a weird subject and it can be too ephemeral to hammer out.