While many people are familiar with the simple concept of SEO, black hat SEO techniques are not known by everyone. They are illegal methods, which consist in violation of all the basic rules established by search engines. The main purpose of black SEO is to quickly bring the site to the top positions of search engines. And it is a tempting idea for many SEOs, but it is worth realizing that black optimization attempts may be justly punished. Despite this, some believe the risks are justified on the basis that they bring good profits.
How is the strategy of black SEO?
Most often, black-marketing techniques are used by affluent users who have no time or desire to wait for the effects of legitimate promotion. In addition, this strategy is sometimes used in order to destroy the sites of competitors.
But how can it be done? There are several methods of black SEO to harm your competitors:
- Plagiarism requests are left on search engines.
- Links to competitors’ website are posted on dubious external sources.
- reviews and comments are written on the competitor’s site with links to low-quality Internet resources.
- If competitors use contextual advertising, their budget can simply be ‘skimmed’.
With such methods, the competitor’s website can be temporarily blocked or even permanently banned.
If we talk about the main methods of black promotion, they include:
- Hidden text. This is an invisible font with many keys in it. Suffice it to use a background similar to the colour of the background of the page or reduce the size of such text to a minimum. As a result, search engine crawlers see it, but users do not.
- Cloaking. The method involves the combination on a site simultaneously useful, interesting content, as well as low-quality text with a large number of keys. Peroveove will interest the visitors alive, the second – the search robots. But here it should be understood that, if the site is suspected in kloaking, it will be blocked permanently.
- Hidden links. Anchors for them may be punctuation marks. In addition, this method includes the placement of links attached to very small pictures.
- Link farm. So called fake sites, which create a lot of links and link to each other.
- Satellite method. Similar to the previous one, but here it’s all about helping to promote the main site with other ancillary resources. However, this method threatens to expose and fall under the filters of search engines.
If we talk specifically about satellite sites, there are several types:
- Static. Represents the same type and rarely updated sites. Almost always placed on free hosting. This is largely why they are easily found by search engines.
- Dynamic. Regularly updated, and even supply interesting content. The creation of such satellites slightly more difficult, but also gives more effect.
- Dorwei. These are low-quality sites that are generated automatically and are of no use to users.
Is it worth the risk to use black SEO?
It is worth remembering right away that this promotion method is dangerous and violates the rules of search engines. Of course, each site owner is free to decide which SEO to use – black or white. The first one has a quick effect, but there is always a risk that the site will fall under a filter and it will no longer be possible to use it.