How to Identify Black Hat SEO?

Black hat tactics increase website traffic but violate the guidelines set by search engines. If search engines discover your use of black hat strategies, your page will be removed from the search results. It may also get you removed from affiliate sites.

How Can You Tell If A Strategy Is Black Hat?

Strategies that increase your search rankings but do nothing for users are usually considered black hat. The same is typically true of pay per click strategies that provide no benefit for the user. Google and Bing keep a list of strategies that are in violation of their terms of service.

What Are Some Examples Of Strategies That Are Considered Black Hat?

• Posting automated content
• Keyword stuffing (pages with more than about 3% keywords)
• Using article spinners
• Using doorway pages
• Unexpectedly redirecting users
• Cloaking
• Hidden links
• Hidden content
• Using copied content
• Purchasing backlinks
• Using networks for guest posting
• Other illegitimate methods of getting backlinks
• Reporting competitors to increase your rankings
• Spreading trojans, viruses, worms, or creating phishing pages (illegal in addition to violating search engines’ terms of service)
• Sending automated requests through search engines
• Use of rich snippet markup spam

Will A Webmaster Using Black Hat Strategies Be Likely To Get Caught?

Google is cracking down on black hat strategies. It’s likely that the risks of using black hat strategies will continue to increase in the future.

How Can You Report A Website That Is Using Black Hat Strategies?

There are circumstances when you should report websites that use black hat strategies.If you are the target of a negative SEO campaign that uses spam links, contact the website’s owners who are creating the bad links to your page. If they don’t remove them, use Google’s disavow links tool. If your website has been targeted using malware, you should remove the malicious code and request a malware review.

If you notice spam appearing in the search results for keywords that your website uses, this could mean a competitor has launched a negative SEO campaign against you. You can report the spam to Google. However, do so cautiously. Falsely reporting spam is considered a black hat strategy.

Need help identifying black hat SEO? Contact the digital marketing experts at Market My Market for a consultation.