Does Black Hat SEO Really Work?

In the field of search engine optimization (SEO), there are three kinds of techniques webmasters may follow in order to help attain good page rankings: white hat, gray hat, and black hat SEO. While we all know that white hat SEO deals more on the quality and relevance of content on the site, and gray hat techniques focus more on methods that stand in between the white hat and the black hat. Black hat SEO meanwhile is not actually recommended since while it can produce positive results instantly, it can eventually put your site on peril because of the violations you would be incurring by following their techniques. But as to your site’s performance metrics, does black hat SEO really work? 

black white hat seo

Before we come with an answer to that question, let us first review the common techniques which fall under black hat SEO:

Cloaking

Page cloaking is among the common practice among webmasters who want to earn high page rankings in a short period of time. In cloaking, you use an automated script that shows a different web page to a search engine spider (Googlebot) from that of a human user. In the black hat perspective, cloaking increases the page views of an unpopular site at a faster rate, hence increasing its ranking in search engines. Cloakers give fake pages to bots or spiders, these pages filled up with keywords making them search-engine friendly, while at the same time providing the real web page to actual users.

Invisible text

Another black hat technique is the use of invisible text. This is the use of hard to read texts (either the fonts are too small or of the same color as the background) which are actually links that when clicked accidentally, redirects the visitor to another site (usually ad sites). Invisible texts are effective for pay-per-click ads, however they do tend to trick users who may not want to visit the ad in the first place.

Doorway pages

Some SEO firms prefer practicing the use of doorway pages in order to achieve high site rankings. There are sites which open on pages with no content, but it will redirect you to the actual destination page.

Spam

Spam are worthless web pages with nothing on them; they are created for the sole purpose of attaining high rankings in the search engines. They pose to contain the information you are looking for, but rather show up to be pages filled with a myriad of advertisements which you may find annoying.

Keyword stuffing

In keyword stuffing, the webpage is filled with keywords, even paragraphs containing keywords that don’t make any sense. Like the other methods, keyword stuffing is meant to improve the site’s rankings since the use of keywords are SEO friendly.

Actually, these techniques do bring about drastic changes in your site once you apply them. The main goal of these methods is to increase your site’s page ranking in search engines and search results in keyword-based inquiries. As stated earlier, there are SEO companies who prefer to use some of these techniques mainly because they are easier and bring in the results faster. Hence, if you are desperate enough to change the current status of your site, then these techniques can actually help you.

It doesn’t really matter which technique you use in improving your website; the white, gray and black hat methods provide you with almost the same results. However, search engines do have their own rules and regulations which you have to conform with. Google as well as other search engines have set up these conditions to maintain justice and fair play amidst the competition of different sites found in the internet. Also, black hat methods in a way trick human users by not providing them with the things that they are asking for, or giving them things which they don’t need.

Using these techniques can easily end the life of your site, since search engines have imposed penalties to those caught doing these practices. These penalties range from suspension of the site to actual termination of the site. Given so, it is better to stay away from these techniques since despite providing you with instant results, in the long run they can damage your business and put all your efforts into waste.



Author bio:

Beatrice Howell, writer and editor for Phdify.com
A high qualification, experience in students newspapers, Beatrice works with dissertations, essays, articles, reviews, summaries and other students work, help in university selection and preparation to entry exams.

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