Black Hat SEO Tricks That You Should Stop Using Right Away

Lot of search engine optimization techniques that were used few years ago are considered to be black hat techniques now. If you have not updated yourself regarding the current SEO techniques then chances are you might be using some unethical techniques and are thus not able to bring your website on the first page of Google. The algorithm of Google fights back these unethical black hat SEO methods and penalizes your website.

Following is a list of black hat SEO tricks that you need to stop:

1. Avoid irrelevant keywords, keywords stacking and keywords stuffing

Do not add irrelevant keywords to get extra page hits. Always keep the content focused on a specific topic so that users find exactly what they are searching for. Never repeat keywords over and over in one sentence or image alt text. Write sentence that makes sense with reasonable density of keywords. Instead of endlessly repeating keywords, use semantically related words.

2. Hidden text, tiny text and hidden links

Do not make the text the same color as the background, put illegible text at the bottom of the page or format images or text that are visually undetectable as links. Always write content that can be read easily. Contrast the text with the color of background and make the links apparent.

3. Gateway pages or doorway pages

Stop haphazardly stuffing phrases with prime goal to achieve high ranking and then redirect visitors to a separate page automatically. Create content rich landing pages and information pages for humans.

4. Cloaking

Do not present search engines with one set of content and site visitors with another. Never trick the visitors from search engines into experiencing a page of different content substantially. Be truthful and create web pages that visitors want and expect to see based in the description on SERP.

5. Duplicate content

Avoid copying content from another website irrespective of it being with or without permission. Write original content always since Google can easily detect duplicate content.

6. Page swapping

Stop getting a web page indexed and ranked and then changing the page entirely. Instead regularly update web pages while keeping the overall topics of the pages intact.

7. Comment spam

Do not post links as comments randomly on blogs to increase the quantity of inbound links. Post comments that are constructive and related to blog post or article.

8. Spam blogs

Do not use software that generates corrupt text with keyword phrases for main purpose of getting visitors click on ads. Take some time and write quality blogs that are unique and fresh.

9. Trackback spam

Do not abuse trackbacks with link to unrelated backlinks on blogs. Let the authors of blogs know about posts being referred from trusted source.

10. Referrer spam

Do not advertise a website by making repeated request using a fake referrer URL to website that broadcast referrer statistics. You should always link to relevant content and allow readers to naturally follow the links.

11. Spam ping

Never notify ping servers of new content repeatedly per minute to create the illusion that the content is new. Instead set up blogging software to ping centralized services once when a blog gets published.

12. Link farm

Don’t seek links from websites with irrelevant or low quality content to improve visibility in the SERPs. Request links from high quality websites where there is a logical connection between the two websites and would be beneficial for the visitors of site.

13. URL hijacking

Do not register a domain name which is a misspelled version of your competitor or any other popular website in order to mislead visitors. Build a website that becomes famous for its rich content.

14. Domain squatting

Never register with a domain with a trademarked word in the name with the intension to make profits off the association. Do some brainstorming and research relevant keywords for a domain name that is easy to remember and which is relevant to the content of website.

15. Cookie stuffing

Do not place affiliate cookies on computers and instead link to retail websites with affiliate links so that you earn a percentage of stake.

16. Social networking spam

Do not message people with advertisements on social networking websites. Instead improve your networking, look out for people with similar interest and exchange contact information wherever you find mutual interest.