The practice of SEO spamming is one of the oldest black hat marketing tactics in the books.
The wiser artificial intelligence gets, the harder it is to be successful with such techniques, especially AI like Google BERT.
Yet, people still try. Trying, in this case, can get your site blacklisted and place your business behind the 8-ball.
In the following article, we’ll be discussing the 10 dangers of this practice. First, however, let’s examine what black hat SEO is and how it operates so you’ll know it when you see it.
White Hat vs. Black Hat SEO
The black hat world is different from the white hat world. It takes shortcuts at the expense of reputation. You may get to “page one Google” more quickly, but you won’t stay there.
Falling from that perch, for the record, can be quite painful. You’ll become more acquainted with what black hat SEO is and its potential fallout in the next section.
For now, let us emphasize where your focus should be, and that’s on white hat SEO. White hat SEO requires well-written, well-produced, original content. It requires you getting the name of your business out there through clear and transparent methods.
It’s not easy. It often means getting to the top organically, providing valuable content, conducting reputable paid campaigns, and doing the “hard work” of serving your customers.
How Black Hat SEO Works
Black hat SEO works much differently. It takes advantage of marketing “holes” and deception. Here are some of the most common tactics.
Overdoing the Optimization of Your Site
This would include writing sparse, non-valuable content while overdoing the keywords. It might also mean using keywords that don’t match with the content.
Other tricks include over-linking, using commercial links on anchor text for internal pages, and sliding in hidden or “invisible” text to your content. (By invisible, we mean it’s on the page, but far too small or concealed for the end-user to notice.)
Scamming Content
Do you copy content from other websites without adding any original ideas? Are you just changing around the wording? Perhaps you’re “spinning” the same article over and over and repackaging as new content?
These are all forms of scammy content. Don’t do it. The artificial intelligence Google and other search engines use will catch you eventually, and they won’t go easy on you.
A better tactic is to create quality content. Here’s how to do it with ease.
Manipulating Links
Scamming guest posts with questionable commercial links, buying reviews, purchasing links, or offering tit-for-tat deals for the sole purpose of getting a link, are all ways to get tagged. Another popular black hat SEO approach is going to blog comments sections and dropping in your link against community guidelines.
Malicious Tactics
Never think that building your site up by tearing others down is the way to go. Unfortunately, some black hat marketers would disagree, falsely reporting competitors to try and get a leg up. Going this route is playing with fire and will inevitably provoke a reaction that gets you discovered.
Squatting
Buying domains that sound like well-known brands and holding them for ransom or monetary gain is now considered a black hat technique. If it’s linked to you, it could hit every website you own, not just the ones for which you’re employing the tactic.
Now that you have a clearer idea of what black hat SEO is, let’s look at the 10 dangers of it for your business. Contrary to popular belief, it goes well beyond “being penalized,” but we’ll start with that one.
1. Search Engine Penalties
SEO spammers find out in a hurry the hell of being penalized by a search engine. That can mean getting blacklisted, though it’s not confined to it.
Your site may very well still be searchable, but it won’t be anywhere near the top. It can take forever to get yourself back to a “respectable” position as well.
2. Being Forced to Pay for Advertising
When you fall out of favour with a black link or some other form of ill-gotten promotion, you can no longer rely on organic results. This forces you to pay for any exposure that you do receive, and that can get expensive in a hurry.
3. Blows to Your Reputation
One of the first things you’ll learn when searching what is a black hat marketing is that it’s absolute cancer to your reputation.
People who see you engage in such tactics will only remember you for your shady business dealings and you’ll have a PR nightmare to claw your way out of.
4. Difficulty Digging Your Way Out
That can lead to incredibly difficult times ahead.
Digging your way out entails the right consultants, employing their suggestions, and waiting for nature to run its course. You’ve also got to rebuild any trust you lost with the public in the offline world.
5. Paying Extra to Correct the Site
Websites are usually attached to businesses. Businesses cost money to operate. When your site is blacklisted or penalized, those costs don’t go away.
As a result, you pay to have your site “fixed.” That money is on top of the operational expenses and any additional costs you might incur to help with apology tours and other reputational repair actions.
6. Getting De-Indexed
Getting penalized is different from getting de-indexed.
When you’re penalized, your site is still available, it’s just way down there in the search results.
When you’re de-indexed, you’re nowhere to be found. Short of someone typing in your exact web address, you’re out of luck.
7. Missing Out on Opportunities
Black hat marketing segregates you from potential business partners or other opportunities reserved only for the sound of reputation. No one wants to work with a scammer, and that’s exactly how you’ll be seen.
8. Giving Your Competitors Fuel
Using a black hat tactic gives your competition ammunition to take shots at you. Their reputation essentially is enhanced at the expense of your own.
9. Long Recovery Times
Yes, it takes forever to recover from a penalty or de-indexing.
Under normal circumstances, it can take as long as four weeks. Imagine how long when you’ve got a penalty on top of that.
10. Losing Everything for Nothing
Black hat SEO, in the end, gets you nowhere. You may have a day or two at the top, but it won’t be worth the weeks you spend in recovery.
It really is losing everything for a little initial reward.
SEO Spamming Offers No Shortcut
Don’t even consider SEO spamming! The risks are too great and your business deserves better. And if it doesn’t, spend more time turning it into something worthy than trying to polish garbage.
Good luck in all your marketing efforts. For design help that requires no black hat tactics, contact Samson Web Design today.
