What is Black Hat SEO? And How to Protect Your Website’s Search Engine Ranking

What is Black Hat SEO?

A black hat in the programming world is a person who employs malicious, unethical, or inappropriate practices. Black Hat SEO, therefore, involves breaking the rules in order to get an unfair advantage in search engine rankings. The next question to come to mind becomes: What accounts for Black Hat SEO?

What Are Some Policy Violations that Can Negatively Affect Your SERP Ranking?

By many accounts, Google owns a vast majority of the search engine market share. Therefore, we will summarize some of their policies here. Other search engines have similar, if not identical, policies. If your website is found to violate these policies, then it may rank lower in results or fall out of the results altogether.
Cloaking is the practice of presenting your website as one thing to users and another to the search engine. For instance, a website might present itself as a travel agency to the search engine but share content about discount drugs to users.
Doorways, or Gateways, are extra pages in your website that serve no other purpose than an extra “link” to the ultimate destination.
Hacked Content is content shared on a webpage without permission. For example, a hacker might inject code and links to a webpage. Invest in professional web development to protect your website against hackers.
Hidden Links, or Hidden Text, are used to manipulate search engines while unseen by the user. White text on a white background or text hidden behind an image, for instance, can be marked as hidden content.
Keyword Stuffing involves packing a webpage with keywords to increase the Google SERP ranking. Keywords should flow naturally with the content of the page.
Automatically Generated Content is created by machines or artificial intelligence. Again, content should be organic and flow naturally.
Comment Spam involves spamming your website’s links on other web pages. The link should be relevant to other messages and content on the webpage.

What Is White Hat SEO?

As you may have guessed, White Hat SEO adheres to the rules set by search engines. As a result, results are long-lasting and reliable. It takes time to learn and employ proper practices, but that’s the job of a White Hat SEO expert. If you are looking for an SEO company with years of experience, then consider iBoost Web. Explore our website to find more information about our available services and prices.