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01 / 06 / 21

What is Black Hat SEO? Everything You Need to Know

What is Black hat SEO? Black hat SEO is when you use unethical measures to rank higher in search engines. These illicit SEO practices are against search engine’s terms of service. Furthermore, these techniques can result in your site being banned from search engines.

In short, Black hat SEO is the opposite of gaining higher rankings organically. When you gain your rankings organically, this is known as White hat SEO. Nowadays, search engine algorithms can detect many illegal SEO tactics. For example, search engines may drop the rankings of a website guilty of using these techniques.

Most Black hat SEO tactics are falling out of use. However, you should still be aware of these disapproved tactics. If you are caught using Black hat SEO, you could damage your company’s reputation. Regardless of whether you used the tactics on purpose or inadvertently.

Black Hat SEO techniques to look out for

There are many illegal SEO techniques out there on the Internet. For example, here are some of the popular examples of Black Hat SEO:

Why do people use Black Hat SEO?

People turn to Black Hat SEO because organic SEO techniques can often take a long time to have an impact. Lying at the heart of effective SEO is a strong marketing campaign. And creating a strong marketing campaign is not an overnight process. So, people often turn to Black Hat SEO for an immediate return on investment.

For some people’s goals using black SEO can be effective and offer immediate exposure to a wide audience. However, any professional and reputable enterprise it is essential to avoid using these techniques as the potential repercussions far out way any potential gains.

Why you must not use it

If caught using Black Hat SEO practises the damages to your business can be irreparable. On a merely technical level, your site can be blacklisted by search engines and removed from their rankings pages permanently. If you are an established business this could mean having to change your company name to have any chance of having a web presence again.

Even without getting caught the damage to your company’s reputation and public relations will still be evident. For example, if word gets around that you use these techniques the image of your company will be tarnished in the minds of customers and potential clients. By association, it will be ingrained in people minds that you use underhanded tactics to get ahead and people will then start to question how you conduct other sides of your business affairs.

These techniques will also shift the focus from your company’s primary goal – delivering solid targeted content to promote you visibility. When getting carried away with climbing the search page rankings at any cost you will lose touch with what your customers actually need and your overall returns will suffer accordingly.

What to do instead

It is essential to use organic means of generating high search engine rankings. To go into depth about how to achieve this would have to be the basis of another article entirely but the main thing to remember is is to provide quality content on your site at all times and to ensure a solid marketing campaign is in place at your company. Without these you are doing your selves and most importantly your customers a disservice.

Do you want to build a strong, effective SEO strategy for your business? We can help. Get in touch with our team today.

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Written by Aggee Digital Journalist