Having online visibility is a very important factor for the growth of a brand nowadays. That’s why many new entrepreneurs end up using any method available to attract leads and get the public’s attention. However, some of these practices can be unethical, illegal and have a long-term negative effect on your image.
These practices are called Black Hat, a set of techniques that can be used to get clicks. and manipulate your rankings in search engines, but which have a negative effect on the user experience. You may even get more visits to your website, but the vast majority of them will not be interested in your product.
The results of many of these techniques are fast and very visible. You get hundreds or thousands of visits within minutes. However, these visits do not convert into sales or contribute to your reputation. That’s why it’s important to avoid these practices.
Monitor and understand what are the most common forms of Black Hat and how you can escape them.
What are the main Black Hat techniques?
Because the definition is quite vague, many things can fall under Black Hat. Check here the most common techniques and what are their effects.
Cloaking
The term “cloaking” can be translated as “camouflage ”. This technique consists of programming the entire page so that it is seen in one way by the search robots and in another way by the user. It may have the right link, a well-crafted SEO and all the other optimizations in its code, but once it’s accessed, the user doesn’t find what was promised.
Doorway Page
Similar to the previous technique, the Doorway Page consists of using a keyword for SEO optimization, but without being related to the content. The term you searched for and that led to the page is present and repeated several times, but the content itself does not address the keyword or answer your questions.
Duplication of Content
This is a practice related to plagiarism, when one site duplicates the content of another. Since Google’s goal is to lead the user to the most relevant content, having multiple sites and pages with the same exact text is counterproductive. This technique is less prominent today, as duplicate or plagiarized sites are flagged and lost priority in search.
Keyword Stuffing
Similar to Doorway Page, this Black Hat technique consists of choosing a keyword for ranking and repeating it as often as possible throughout the text, regardless of how it affects the content. Some degree of repetition is still important to demonstrate the relevance of the content, but an exaggerated use can also have a negative effect on the site’s visibility.
How to escape Black Hat?
Despite having a visible result in your metrics, these practices damage your credibility in the long term. Furthermore, they have nothing to do with your actual performance metrics, such as your conversion rate and sales or loyalty rate.
The best way to avoid Black Hat is to know positive SEO techniques and apply them correctly within your site. Check out some of the main ones here.
Mobile friendly content
Most of online browsing today is done through mobile devices , mainly smartphones and tablets. This means that in order to provide the best user experience, you should create pages that are optimized for these devices.
Many website development platforms already have layouts that automatically adapt to mobile devices, but you should think about other aspects too. Definition of images, content position, loading time on mobile internet, etc.
Link Building
One of the factors used to determining a page’s ranking is how many other links point to it. This indicates that the content is rich and referenced on other sites. And you can achieve this using link building.
In essence, it consists of creating hyperlinks on your pages that point to other pages on your site. Thus, instead of re-explaining content, you indicate to the user other relevant content.
Metadescription
Metadescription of a page is a snippet inserted into the page’s HTML code that provides a summary of its content. When the site appears as a result of a search, the meta description appears just below the link.
The idea of this content is to clarify even more for the user what type of content they will find on your site. Thus, those who decide to click on the link also tend to stay longer, read the full content and contribute to its relevance.
Title and subheading optimization
Another important factor to consider is the scannability of the text, which mainly depends on the titles and subtitles. In Black Hat practices, these components are created to please search engines as much as possible, but they do not reflect on the quality of reading.
Good subheadings help to divide the page content in a way that the user easily find what you are looking for. That way, a person can clear up their doubts without needing to read extensively.
Keyword Research
Much of the work SEO takes place before content creation, with keyword research. At this point, you search for different search terms that match your content and compare your search index, competition and relevance.
Your goal here is to find the most searched terms that can be inserted into your content. as the main keyword, as well as secondary terms. That way the content will rank well and still be relevant.
Friendly URL
Have you noticed how some sites have a URL composed mostly of random symbols and letters? This is a negative point within the search engines. Fortunately, it’s pretty easy to fix. Just edit the URL of the site so that it contains your keyword or is the same as the title of the content.
Avoiding Black Hat techniques is very important for the growth of your site and your brand. It may be tempting to get quick results, but the long-term damage is much greater.
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