We all want those juicy top rankings. There are a few people who will do anything to get to them. These swindlers are often misguided at heart and look to game the system in their favour. These underhanded techniques are known as Black Hat SEO.
Disclaimer: Beware this does contain sarcasm. (A lot of sarcasm)
To take us through this I’d like to introduce you to a notorious character within SEO…Mr.Metabasher.
Hello, everybody.
Why just stick to just an optimised site when you could go well above and beyond that? Admittedly, there’s no such thing as being too good. (But, there is such a thing as being too cocky!) Over-optimisation could come in many forms.
Here are a few tips and tricks on how you can join the dark side of SEO.
Keyword Stuffing
Saying the keyword many times can make the keyword seem more of a keyword, right? Some might say that the bots are smart enough and this is a very old practice. That’s not what we got into the business of Black Hat SEO for. Does keyword stuffing look natural to you? Who cares! There’s no better way to get your point across than repeating the word multiple times.
Irrelevant Keywords
Another cheeky way to over optimise your website is by throwing a whole concoction of irrelevant keywords just to rank. Also, by adding variations of that word which could include;
- Misspellings of keyword
- Variations of the same word. Hit that thesaurus hard.
- Regional variations of the keyword. No comprendo.
So, go ahead. After all, they do say, the more, the merrier! I don’t think Google would say that though.
Invisible links/text
This is an ancient tactic of deception. Popularised during the cold war to send coded messages to allies. Let’s face it we’re at war with our competitors. So we’ll hide as many keywords and links as we can. The user can’t see it, so it shouldn’t be an issue.
By making these the same colour as your background or changing the font size to 0, nobody has to see your links or text full of keywords.
Content Scams
Why not join a private blog network? Full of scallywags looking to exploit link juice. They don’t really offer any sort of value to the user. And, when it comes to content; that pretty much comes last. People who actually do proper SEO and content marketing will preach that ‘content is king’. But, who has time for that?
Bait & Switch
Think of this like fishing. You throw the bait, wait for the float to dip and pull in the fish.So, set the bait and write a page to rank on Google with a set of keywords. After you rank, change it to another product or page.This is definitely a crafty and creative way to hit the jackpot!
Cloaking
Be sneaky and try to fool the search engine’s algorithm.
Cloaking is done by creating one piece of content for the Google bots to crawl and then creating another that the user sees. The crawlers hate this and you will get penalised heavily for this.
Link Manipulation
Get links! Links from anywhere. Directories, sites that are not relevant, spammy sites etc. Are you a dentistry and you’ve got a link from a bee-keeper? Hey, a link is a link. Don’t be so snobby.
Link Farming
Old McSpammer had a farm, e-i-e-i-oh,
And on that farm, he built some links, e-i-e-i-oh,
With a backlink here, and a backlink there,
Here a link, there a link,
Everywhere a link, link…
By Scott Willoughby
Shady Redirects
Generally throwing shade in Google’s direction is not a good idea.(So I am told) All of you webmasters should take advantage of the 301 redirects and use expired domains to keep up that all essential link juice.
Paid Links
Links are valuable things so why not make it a way to make some extra cash? There are many ways that you could do this such as selling your links in exchange for money.
Blog Comment spam
Why not post a link to your website on a wide range of blogs and sites to gather more links. Don’t worry whether they are relevant sites or not, because it doesn’t matter! A link is a link, is a link, is a link…
Congratulations, you’re now a Black Hat Pro ?
Erm, Mr.Metabasher just disappeared. I think he’s on page 10. Anyway…
You made it! If you love getting Google Penalties and potential lawsuits, follow this Black Hat guide.
But remember, it’s never too late to come back to the light side of SEO with some cracking White Hat techniques to get yourself ranked ethically. Here’s a little bit of insider information: black hat techniques don’t actually work.
For some brief but fair ways to make your business rank well with Google, check out our blog or contact our SEO wizards.