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. <\/p>\n\n\n\n