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4 Black Hat SEO Techniques That Are Killing Your SEO

Published on 30 Sep

About 10 years ago, you could rank for literally any keyword without too much effort, then Google caught on. What were SEO marketers doing to manipulate Google? Google realized something needed to be done to penalize these spammy techniques. So, Google started cracking down on these black hat seo techniques and giving out penalties. Google has since then rolled out many core updates and algorithm changes in order to clean up Google and make it a fair playing field. Their goal is to have a web space with relevant and unique content for businesses and consumers. Keep reading to learn more about the black hat techniques that are likely ruining your SEO campaigns.

Here are 4 black hat strategies that are ruining your SEO campaign

1. Keyword Stuffing

Not many companies were implementing SEO techniques 10 years ago, so competition was low and ranking for your desired keyword would happen in the matter of days. SEO gurus were “keyword stuffing” which meant inputting their target keyword into their web content in every sentence and header in order to get the Search Engine’s attention.  They believed that by keyword stuffing it would show Google that their page was an authority on the topic of the repeated keyword. 

Example: If you wanted to rank for “dentist in Vaughan,” you would have put “dentist in Vaughan” in every other word or sentence of the page to get Google’s attention that you were an authority on this topic. 

2. Spammy Backlinks from Link Farms

The amount of backlinks your domain has IS and has ALWAYS BEEN one of Google’s main ranking factor. The more backlinks your site has, the more popular Google views it. So, black hat SEO teams took on this strategy and started getting as many backlinks as possible to link to their website domain. And it worked, it really worked. Websites with the most backlinks would shoot up to the first position on Google without much effort for their target keyword. These “link farms” would advertise buying packages of 1000 backlinks for $5 and this melicious technique would give you low-quality, non-relevant backlinks. However, now, Google values quality of links over quantity and if external links to your site are not relevant or from low-quality sites Google will give you a penalty.  With a white hat SEO firm like Xi Digital we can help you with high quality linking campaigns and avoid penalties from Google.

3. Cloaking

Cloaking is a deceptive SEO approach to earn site traffic. It’s a sneaky method of showing different content to different users for the same web page. One piece of content will have nothing to do with the search result, another version of the page will be optimized for the search engine and a third version could be a landing page to please users. Google views this strategy as deceiving and deceptive and it will penalize your website for “cloaking.” 

4. PBNs (Private Blog Networks)

PBNs also known as Private Blog networks with:

  • Page Switching
  • Duplicate Content (or Non-Unique Content)
  • Doorway Pages or Gateway Pages
  • Tiny Text and Hidden Links
  • Spinned Content
  • Spammy Guest Blogs
  • Cybersquatting or Domain Squatting
  • Parasite Hosting (also posting on the bottom of high DA sites blog forum’s to take their link juice)

You can learn “what not to do” from black hat SEO techniques

What if you could reverse the negative seo techniques and start getting valuable traffic to your site again? 

Auditing your website for black hat SEO techniques can be difficult without the knowledge of an experienced digital marketer or an SEO expert. Let us help you get your website back to “good health,” so you can start seeing increases in Google rankings and site traffic. Our SEO team will assess and analyze your on-site and off-site SEO strategy to understand your website’s strengths and weaknesses. This will allow us to figure out what is really affecting your search positions.

Let’s maximize your web presence, say goodbye to Google penalties, and start dominating Google again!

Contact us today for a free quote!
 

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