Getting your site’s ranking to rub shoulders with the first page players is a long and painstaking process, and one definitely might wonder whether all the big players play by the SEO rules to get there.
Truth is, some play it fair, others cheat, but in the end, only one thing matters: results. Are you trying to play by search engine optimization (SEO) rules, but your site still doesn’t get the love it deserves?
There’s a short but risky way to the top called black hat SEO. Let’s briefly explain what black hat SEO is and present you with the top black hat SEO techniques that’ll help your site get more traffic.
A Brief History About Black Hat SEO
When we talk about black hat SEO, we talk about the use of unethical and illegal tactics and methods to boost your page traffic. Don’t worry, you are not breaking any criminal laws, you are only going against Google’s terms of service. However, there are consequences if you get caught. Your page will get de-indexed, and all of your work will go down the drain.
That being said, there are some methods that are still used today by many. Here are the most popular ones:
Cloaking
Most people will tell you that cloaking is safe and, to be fair, they are not lying. This is somewhere between a white and gray hat technique.
Cloaking is the process of tricking both users and search engines by presenting different information to them. One stream of info is presented to the users, and another to the search engines. Users mostly encounter a spammy site that is not related to their search query at all, and while search engines usually don’t index these, they sometimes “see” a legit site in their place and rank it right away.
So the level in which you cloak your site will determine whether your page will fall under the spectrum of white, gray, or black hat. Lighter cloaking is a white hat SEO technique, anything above that is gray and black hat.
Image Mirroring
This is a relatively new technique that utilizes the power of images in posts and content. Finding the right keywords for your content is hard enough, but most content nowadays requires images, too. So if your posts contain frequently used stock images, chances are they will not do your SEO score any good. After all, why should Google pick yours out of hundreds if not thousands?
Well, a mirrored image is considered a new image by Google. Sweet, right? It’s a good method as there aren’t many sites using it, meaning it won’t get marked as black hat anytime soon, but it’s slowly becoming more and more popular.
Private Blog Network (PBN)
PBNs are а good way to up the traffic on your money site by creating other sites that will link to your main one. A PBN doesn’t necessarily fall under a black hat, but when search engines get a whiff of who’s behind them and see a pattern in the IP addresses and the content, you’re busted.
A good way to cover your tracks is by using companies that offer PBN hosting services. They can cover your tracks and make it harder for Google to catch you. Look for companies like LaunchCDN, which offers a good PBN hosting service.
Keyword Stuffing
Considered a red-zone move, keyword stuffing is still massively used, but keep in mind that Google has become very agile in tracking down and de-indexing sites that are stuffed with keywords but don’t offer good content.
So while the average post should contain a keyword in 1% to 3% of the content, a black hat SEO method would crank that number up multiple times, and this can skyrocket your site’s ranking in no time.
Slowly but surely, keyword stuffing is dying out, but considering how many webmasters still use it, it can be said that it’s still a “good” black hat tactic.
Inverting Indexes
This is a new method which, while being almost 100% safe, is also very hard to do right.
Invert indexing means that you look for your competition in a niche, see in which keyword categories they beat you, and then copy that page. After removing some of the connecting words, you’ll end up with a long list of potential keywords that you can add to a post, but keep in mind that it’s really hard to get the whole list into play, which is the idea.
A writer would have a very hard time coming up with authentic content when they need to use more than 100 keywords. In the end, it’s a technique that can be really beneficial, but very costly in both time and money.
Conclusion
Well, there you have it—the best black hat SEO techniques that have survived Google’s wrath and will continue to plague SERPs for some time to come.
In the end, the results are all that matters, but before you make a rash decision and get seduced by the potential of black hat SEO, do know that most black hat techniques are short-term wonders that can harm your online business in the long term. There’s no point in getting into the game and cheating knowing that you’ll get disqualified. If you do want to do that, take our advice and don’t do it on your own!
About the Author
Keanu Novell is a trained and experienced web developer who has worked with several individuals and businesses in creating effective websites. Keanu has extensive knowledge of the ins and out of web development, making it easy for him to create income-generating websites. When Keanu is not busy working with his clients, he shares his knowledge on web development by regularly contributing
