Black Hat SEO Techniques You Should Avoid When Doing SEO

1. Keyword Stuffing

If we define keyword stuffing, it refers to using keywords on your page excessively to rank better. It was a widely popular technique for increasing site ranking until 2000. Later when Google observed that the technique of keyword stuffing is not of much user relevance, its importance started falling.

Google has started being strict for such practices to avoid any bad user experience. According to the Google Panda Algorithm, any site with poor content will not be able to get a place among the top search results of Google. Keyword stuffing is also considered to be a bad technique to enhance your page content.

Avoid using the same keyword again and again in any content. Not only it lowers the user experience but also increases the chances of getting penalized by Google. You can use similar words or words that relate to your keyword instead of unnecessarily filling your content with the same word.

2. Overwritten Alt Tags

Using Alt text for images SEO is a good way of increasing site ranking but using multiple alt tags is not a good option. Using one single relevant content for your alt tag is more than enough.

Using many keywords in the alt tag for one single image may lead your site into some serious trouble. You can not rank for all the keywords all at once. Hence, it is recommended to focus on one keyword per image on your content.

3. Overusing keywords in anchor text for internal pages

Exact match anchor text is a good way to link to a page within your website that has a similar content. But again, as we discussed earlier, overusing anything is not a good idea.

Do not force your keywords in the context even if it is not necessary. Use natural looking text to link to pages. This is also a part of keyword stuffing. And as you know, your site may get penalized for excessive keyword use. Hence, stay away from such bad practice.

Some sites have really good and quality content but do not rank good. Whereas, some sites have very poor content quality but rank better because of the overuse of keywords in anchor texts for interlinking.

Google keeps updating its search algorithm regularly so that truly deserving sites may benefit from it. With such updates, many sites may see a sudden fall in ranking. Whereas the sites that follow the right SEO tactics, do not get affected much.

4. Unnecessary keywords

Suppose you search for red balloons on Google. One of the entries in the search results has in its title “red balloon”, so you click on it. But as you visit the page, it has content on blue balloons. This is a clear case of poor user experience.

The next time, even if the same website comes for some relevant search result, you will not on it because of your poor experience. Thus, stay away from using unnecessary keywords in your content.

Getting site traffic by using unnecessary keywords will not last for long and Google will eventually penalize or shut down your site.

5. Excessive use of inter-linking

People follow all types of unnecessary ways to increase their site rank. Often do we find that websites add a lot of interlinking on their homepage. They add links to their “About us”, “contact us” or product pages on their home page. This seems to be a forceful way of adding links of the page that will anyways rank better on search engines. Webmasters often find such issues with many websites that later lead to them being penalized.

6. Hidden links

Excessive use of linking in any way is considered wrong by Google. It is often observed by Webmasters that websites often hide links on their web pages either by using CSS elements or choosing the same color for fonts and background. There is much-hidden text checker tool that can help you remove any unwanted links from your site to prevent your site from getting penalized.
According to Google, there are many deceptive ways of putting links on a web page such as putting an image on the link, positioning text off-screen using CSS, writing text with 0 font size and so on.

However, hidden texts and links are not always a bad practice. You can enhance the site experience by using good descriptions as alt tags for images or videos.

7. Overuse of HTML headings

Many websites write content on their website along with more than one H1 tag just to rank better. No one denies the importance of heading tags for SEO but overuse is no doubt a bad practice.
Using one H1, H2, H3 tags are always a sufficient option.

8. Duplicate Content

It becomes difficult for Google to give the best search result to a user when there is so much duplicate content on different domains. One content that ranks good on Google is copied by many websites to increase their site rank. Earlier, using duplicate content was not considered to be a big deal. But now, Google has made strict rules regarding copied content. If you want to use quality content as yours, you can use reference sources on your content that you used from different sources.

9. Using content automation tools

Generating content using automation tools for websites is one of the easiest ways to get content for your web pages. It requires zero efforts from your side and you get what you want.

If you write a content manually, you will follow all the guidelines for good content. Using HTML tags, images and videos, paragraphs alignment, font size and many more are some of the good practices of writing a quality content. But content from automation tools provides none of these.

Automation tools do not take the use of keywords into consideration and create just any random content of poor quality. In the case of no relevant content on your website, your ranking may suffer or search engines may even blacklist your site.

Try writing content on your own because you only know best what keywords you want to rank for. This may take time but you will gradually get the desired results.

10. Bait and Switch technique

Many people have doubts that are bait and switch illegal? To make it clear, yes it is!

Many companies have faced the consequences of using this technique and suffered strict legal actions.

There are many bait-and-switch articles that explain what this exactly is. In this technique, first, a web page is created for Google using some keywords. Later when this page gets a good ranking on Google, the content on these pages is changed that is a clear case of misleading advertisement.

11. Spinning article content

Spinning a content is a clever way of escaping duplicate content. It is one of the widely used black hat SEO techniques. 

This practice is so widely used that there are many content spinning service providers available online. There are also many paid and free article spinning tools. 

Spun content is generally of no significant value or importance. You can write spun content manually or use content spinning tools. Try to stay away from using such black hat SEO techniques to be safe from any Google penalties.

12. Content Scraping

Content scraping is a technique wherein some content is taken from some reputed sites and little is added to them. This content is usually taken without even considering its relevance. Scraped content SEO is a bad practice for getting ranking on search engines.

There are a number of content scraping tools available online but you should try to refrain from them. It is a clear case of content breaching and can lead you to some serious legal problems.

Web scraping is illegal and thus Google has set up guidelines for content scraping protection. Be cautious while using the “latest news” by Google Webmasters. Do not put in a lot of information from different sites there.

To protect yourself from any legal problems, use some good anti-web scraping software. These tools and software easily give you details of the site that is copying your content.  

13. Content cloaking

Not many Google users are aware of what is cloaking in SEO. Cloaking in SEO is a black hat SEO technique where the content for the web crawlers is different from the content for the users.

It is like having two different versions of content for the same page. One is made for getting search engine rankings and the other is made for the site visitors. This is a misleading SEO technique.

According to Google guidelines, cloaking violates the Webmasters rules and regulations and may lead to the site getting penalized.

14. Malicious software and contents

When talking about black hat SEO techniques, malicious contents is one of them. Using malicious tools such as adware, bots, bugs, rootkits, spyware, Trojan horses, viruses, and worms is a illegal activity by law and Google also condemns it.

The content of such websites displays media on a website and download files on the computer using the malicious software on different websites, applications, javascript and flash files.

If you want to protect your system from any harmful files, install a good antivirus on your system. Do not forget to update your antivirus regularly.

15. Clickbait Titles

Clickbait is a Blackhat SEO technique where the title of the page is written in such a manner that it attracts the user and he clicks on it. These titles are usually completely different from the content on the page.

Clickbait ads are created with the aim of generating more site traffic. Such titles are written using so much flowery text that the user instantly gets attracted towards them. Then when he opens the link, what he gets is completely different.

This can harm your site reputation for the long run. Next time even if your ad is a genuine one, the user will never click on it because of his poor experience in the past. We often find such titles on various social media platforms such as Facebook. The user gets fooled and clicks on the link and thus has a poor site experience. Good user experience is of topmost priority for Google.

16. Web Rings

A group of similar websites interlinked in a circular structure over the web is known as a webring hub. Being a part of webring is not a bad idea unless you are using it wholly for the purpose of increasing search engine ranking. You need the permission of webmasters to become a part of any webrings.

17. Spammy Guest Posts

Guest blogging is a widely used black hat SEO technique today. People send emails and messages to some good and reputed bloggers to publish their articles on their website. Such articles are usually of no genuine value and contain some dofollow links.

Do not do guest blogging on just any random site. Publishing on a poor site can affect your site reputation as well.

As Matt Cutts says, guest posts were a good way to link building until people started doing it way too much. Adopting the right guest posting strategy can always be good for your site but avoid spamming.

19. Link Bait

Link bait is one of the black hat SEO techniques wherein a good ranking article is modified into some other content. You take an article and get links to it. Once you are successful in this and get a good page rank, you completely change the article content. Usually, the new content is nowhere related to the previous one.
It gives a poor user experience and Google never favors this.

20. Offering free products in exchange for customer reviews

Many business owners try to attract their customers by asking for reviews with a link to the site in exchange for some free products or service. This is becoming a widely used way of increasing the links to your site. More links mean more web authority and thus better site rank.

Customer reviews are no doubt a good practice of increasing your site reputation. But reviews with website links is totally unneeded since everybody knows which website is the review for. Adding it unnecessarily is a clear case of spamming Google with site link and getting a good page rank.

21. Link exchanging

Link exchange service is one of the widely used black hat SEO techniques. It is like a contract between 2 sites to help each other get a good page rank. There many link exchange websites available on the web that provides this service.

Link exchange might seem to be a quick step towards getting better site rank, but you may have to pay for it later if Google finds it out. Refrain from buying links from other sites.

22. Spammy blog comments

Spammy blog comments is a black hat SEO technique that happens when you try to insert your link in every blog comment on different sites even when it is not needed. These sites might be irrelevant, but still, links are placed with the motive of getting better web authority.

This method is a poor SEO practice and affects your online reputation badly. If you own a blog you can prevent others from spamming your blog with comments in two ways. You can either directly delete them or keep their approval pending.

23. 301 Redirects

If you have recently moved or changed a page on your website, using 301 redirects is a good way to prevent any bad user experience. But recently, people have started using it as a black hat SEO technique.

Old and expired sites are used and redirected to a site to get more link authority. It does matter whether the site is relevant to the business or not, it is used to increase your link juice. These links are of poor quality and no use.

Online movie sites also cheat their users each time one clicks on a movie link to watch it. As soon as the user clicks on it, he is redirected to some totally different site that has no relation to the movie site. It gives poor user experience and may lead the site to get penalized by Google.

24. Anchor text with money value

Commercial anchor text keywords are basically money keywords that generate financial value. Your anchor text profile will be nonorganic if the number of brand anchor texts is less.

25. Spamming footer with links

On many websites, you will see the footer of the website loaded with unnecessary links. It is one of the poor SEO techniques. There is no point stuffing keywords in the footer of your site with the sole purpose of link spamming.

This is a clear case of generating unnatural links for your website to enhance your site authority and reputation. You may lose your site rank and end up getting penalized by Google for link spam.

26. Selling links

Suppose your site has a really good site authority and so you start selling links to other sites. This not only passes the domain authority to that other site but may also reduce your site traffic because it is against Google guidelines.

If you get caught by Google, you may have to suffer your site penalization. This will be a loss for you as well as the sites you sell links to.

27. Link Buying

Do not get fooled by the sites that claim to give you good quality links at cheap rates. Link buying is against Google guidelines so it can anyway not be a quality link. All the link juice you receive from such sites will go to waste if you get caught by Google.

This will be a total waste of money and efforts in the end. Moreover, the little authority you would have at the moment will all go in vain and it will take a lot of time to get back the lost reputation. So, it is better to stay away from such black hat SEO techniques.

28. Paying for advertorials

In the earlier time, the sole motive of going for paid advertorials was to enhance the page rank. The Google later declared page rank as of no valuable importance.

But that does not make paid advertorials a good SEO tactic. Anything that involves buying and selling in SEO is considered to be a black hat SEO technique. Generating page authority and links naturally is a better option to choose to rank in search engines. Using Paid advertorial links may get your site penalized.

If you still want to use paid editorials, you can use a “nofollow” with the link. This way, your users will be able to see your link and at the same time, you are safe from getting penalized. This is because, no follow links are not indexed by Google.

29. Directory Listing

Directory listing is an SEO technique where we submit our website links on various business listing sites to increase our page authority. If you really want to list your business online, you should create a Google my business page, or use social media platforms like Facebook, Yahoo, Twitter or Linkedin.

Keep updating these directories regularly.

30. SEO parasite hosting

Just like a parasite enter into a body and gains benefits from it like nutrients, similar is the case with parasite hosting in SEO.

 Parasite hosting SEO is a black hat SEO technique to get access to someone else’s website and fill it with your keywords to put the link of your website.

It is like getting illegal and unauthorized access to some other website that has a good domain authority. Parasite pages SEO are usually not in the notice of the owner of the authority site. The sole reason for this technique is to get a good ranking on search engines by placing your links on the high authority websites in a fraud manner.