What is “Black Hat” SEO?
In a perfect world, where everybody plays by the rules, this would be enough and the work of the search engines should be pretty easy.
The problem is that many self-proclaimed "SEO Experts" are looking for short term results just to increase website traffic without having in consideration the long term consequences of their actions.
Some of those "SEO Experts" use what are called "Black Hat" tricks to trick search engines like Google. They used techniques like:
- Content
- Plagiarism: To copy content from other websites
- Scraping: To copy content from other websites and modifying it slightly by using synonyms or so.
- Posting too much content from third party sites by using automated tools like feeds.
- Back Links
- Abusing of Guest Blogs
- Bad Back Linking: Using tricks like exchanging many links with unassociated websites (I point to you and you point to me)
- Link Farming: Paying to have links pointing to you
- Posting comments on Blogs just to get a back link
- Social Media Citations.
- Posting false reviews
- Buying false Likes
- Buying false Friends or Connections.
Search Engines, in response, keep changing their algorithm and weigh not only the content of the website but also external factors like links pointing to the website and the citations that the content of this website is generating in blogs and social media sites. Search Engine companies have big pockets and invest in ways to provide the best results to the end client.
While “Black Hat” tricks may work for a while, once the Search Engines detects those tricks they can punish the culprit so it’s like they never existed. I have heard some horror stories of companies who have spent thousands of dollars with an obscure SEO company only to have to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars with serious companies trying to undo whatever the other company did.