Avoid Black Hat SEO

There are numerous ways of getting your site ranked higher in search engines’ results pages. But not all practices are ethical and in accordance with guidelines. Black hat SEO is a term generally used to reflect the ‘bad way’ of doing SEO. While such techniques may not be technically illegal, they are discouraged by search engines and can hurt your rankings in the long run. Read on to find out more!

• Keyword Stuffing– This refers to the idea of cramming your text with keywords. Keep in mind that your content needs to make sense for a human reader. Although getting recognised by search engines is important, at the end of the day, priority should be given to your human readers.

• Invisible Text– This occurs when one uses the same text colour as the background colour with the aim of making certain words invisible for the human eye yet crawlable by search engine spiders.

• Doorway Pages– Such pages are sometimes also referred to as entry or gateway pages. They are created to do well for particular phrases but then would automatically redirect visitors to another destination.

• Linking Schemes– Getting inbound links against payment or creating link pyramids (link pyramids are sites built with the purpose of linking back to main sites). By doing so, your link building might seem strong from the point of view of search engines, but genuine links are more valuable in the long run.