Black Hat SEO: Killing Your Rankings [Infographic]

Google has warned that black hat tactics are “unethical, overly aggressive marketing efforts where a company tries to manipulate search engine results in an unfair way.” Despite Google’s warnings, many Internet companies persist in providing black hat SEO services. The truth is, using black hat tactics on your site can be as scary as facing these slasher movie murderers.

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Doorway pages are set up in such a way that a visitor generally cannot reach them through the site navigation. Instead, they are designed to rank well in the search results and lead people into the site through a spammy page, often stuffed with keywords and nonsense content. A good SEO company will steer clear of this SEO killer.

Hiding links by matching the font to the color of the background of the site is a great way to see your rankings murdered. A sound internal linking strategy is a better way to strengthen your on-page SEO.

Site content is important, but some methods of generating content are anything but safe. Scraping content from the SERPs is a sure way to get your site penalized. Create original, informative content for your site for better results.

Presenting different content to the search engines than you provide to your users is a frightening tactic that doesn’t work. Google can spot cloaking and will remove your site from the index.

Although link building is a key component of improving your organic SEO, automating the process is not the way to go. Skip the link spam and get quality links by building trust and authority in your industry.

Stuffed content filled unnaturally with keywords is a truly scary SEO tactic sure to get your site penalized. Content should be created in a way that uses keywords naturally while also providing value to the site visitor.

Avoid being blacklisted by selecting white hat tactics for SEO. Otherwise, you never know how your rankings might be slashed.

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About Breeanne Martin

Breeanne has been involved in both online and traditional marketing for the last five years after graduating from Brigham Young University. Now living in West Bountiful, she enjoys cycling, gardening, skiing, and traveling.

Check out Breeanne Martin on Google+

11 Comments

  1. Q.T. Getomov says:

    That’s a really good infographic! It’s given me some ideas to…

  2. My favorite is the Hannibal Lecter/Keyword Stuffing combo.

  3. lol – good job coming up with an SEO Halloween idea – something like that hadn’t even crossed my mind :P

  4. This is a great info graph you guys made and it definitely fits in with the season. Happy Halloween!

  5. So fitting for the holidays! I think as long as the internet exists people will always try to game it for their benefit. I am actually all for many of the Google updates because they seem to clean things out a bit.

  6. good job done , specially with coming up with an idea like this .well written information about black hat tactics .this is quite usefull for all the readers .nice done .keep it up

  7. Happy Halloween! Link Spamming is definately similar to an annoying little doll named chucky.
    Google actually needs to be more stringent of black hat seo tactics and utilize a stronger method to enforce this. Seeing companies who utilize black hat seo and make it to the first page is the worst feeling ever.

  8. well described blog .realy liked the way all the black hat seo techniques is picturised with meaningfull content .good work done .plus the halowen theme is the limelight of this blog

  9. I never used black Hat Before & Never Advise Anyone for that.
     

  10. This is really fine infographic, but I never used black hat stuff before.

  11. I love this. Great infographic, but also a lesson that SEO done right is most important. Quality content, backlinks, and building relationships in the industry is definitely the way to go.

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Emily Duffy
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