Black Hat Seo in Search Engine Optimization terminology, refers to the aggressive use of unethical techniques with the sole purpose of manipulating the search engine index. While black hat SEO and White hat SEO techniques share the common goals to improve the websites visibility, each strategy as its own benefits and disadvantages. Many businesses still follow black hat SEO as it works immediately and the results are mind blowing. A lot of industries are gaining income, using such unethical activities. But, unfortunately the drawback is that it totally goes against all the ethical guidelines of search engine and leads to manual penalties. This damages business reputation and leads to untimely blacklisting of your website.

Most people who build or own websites are focused on only getting ranked on search engines and completely forget their human audience. A black hatter does not pay attention to the fact that these ways create a poor user experience by presenting content in a deceitful way to search engine spiders. A complete list of black hat SEO activities were actually considered legitimate. Search Engine Optimization methodology. In recent times, such procedures are frowned upon in the SEO Society. It is best to avoid such short sighted
practices which will provide high rankings that are short lived in the long run and becomes detrimental to the quality of your site.

Let us now take a closer look at some Black Hat SEO techniques that you should probably avoid to create a website that provides a comfortable user experience by giving users exactly what they want.

1. CLOAKING
With google constantly aiming to achieve better relevance in their SERP’s, webmasters discovered handy ways to manipulate this. Cloaking is a widely known technique of deceiving the search engines by showing different content and guiding your users to different content or webpage than the one they think they are going to. Content duplication is also a tactic used in current times. Algorithms are modified constantly to index only fresh and new content. Therefore, you should focus on creating original content for your website

2. Keyword and Meta Tag Stuffing
Keyword stuffing consists of overloading the content of a certain webpage with keywords to make it more valuable for the search engine spiders. Although, making it worse for visitors at the same time. Similar to this is meta tag stuffing, where keywords are stuffed into the
description of meta tags within the website. It has proven to be ineffective since 2005.

3. Splog
This is actually short for spam blogs. It is a kind of blog with low quality content created for the sole purpose of generating backlinks to another website. It is also known as satellite
blog.

4. Spamdexing

This refers to the practice of deliberately manipulating search engines by over optimization of your website for optimal indexing. Here are the top popular tactics that black hat SEOs’ follow:
● Link Farms
They are actually more popular now than ever. A questionable procedure that includes a set of web pages created with the only aim of ranking to a targeted page. All of us as seen webpages that contains 200+ links all pointing to one of the several sites.

● Buying and Selling Links
This as been around for a long time now. It is the paid equivalent of organic link building. Though, this goes totally against the google ethical guidelines.

● Forum spams & Blog Comment Spams

Most blogs and forums offer readers to leave comments with their names and link to theirwebsite. A lot of people are repeating their comments with the aim of getting links. Black hatters are exploiting this method for long. Even though it’s a lot harder now as most blogs and forums have filters and moderators that check each comment before approving.

5. Cookie Stuffing
This is an affiliate marketing illegal practice. Simply referred to has putting a cookie to someone’s computer without their knowledge. It is used on review sites to get commission even if people don’t click your link. Which means you make money. But, not by referring your users to the merchant account.

6. Page Hijacking
This the act of making a copy of a trusted and authoritative site. After which the site is used for stealing passwords and accounts, redirecting visitors to low quality sites for many other
unethical purposes.
7. Sybil Attack
Creation of multiple fake personalities. With the clear intention of using them for link or
comment spam.
8. Buying expired domains
It is when a reputable domain that as expired recently is purchased and set up with a 301
redirect to point to other site in order to gain that reputable domains’ popularity.
9. Doorway/Gateway Pages
This refers to web pages that are stuffed with keywords to gain ranking. Websites that
redirect to other webpages by misleading links such as “Click here” also included in this
category.

In the end, such negative ways to search engine optimization does work, but, only
temporarily. They get a huge boost in rankings at a rapid speed and at the same time get
banned also for using such unapproved practices. The list mentioned here explains the most
famous types of black hat SEO, but one must steer clear of all dark tactics. A company’s’

mission and value has a lot of weight when it comes to branding, hence, performing such
heinous crimes can lead to a damaged reputation and the company will be wasting a lot of
time running behind lawsuits and penalties. Inorder to build back the trust of search engines
and client commitment.
Do you really think it’s worth taking the risk?
Online media has a vast library of positive ways to legitimately improve website visibility in
the SERPs. A good practice is following your search console guidelines and staying away
from negative activities that can totally go to waste as google’s sophisticated algorithms can
catch you red handed and your website will be barred for life. The process of getting your
website listed on google can be quite daunting if you go by the rules, but this process has a
better hope of sustenance in the long run. Comprehend that your main goal is to introduce
your business to your potential visitors, the rest will follow.