Black Hat SEO: These Techniques That Will Ban You from Google in 2023

Referencing your site naturally on Google is a long way through which you need to have patience, resources, and consistency so that some people sometimes decide to take shortcuts. But don’t get me wrong, Google sees it all. Google knows everything. So it is better to remain your friend and not switch to the dark side of black hat SEO. We explain to you why.

Black hat SEO refers to unethical or manipulative techniques used to improve a website’s ranking in search engine results. These techniques go against Google’s guidelines and can result in penalties or even a ban from the search engine.

Here are some black hat SEO techniques that can result in a ban from Google in 2023

1. Keyword stuffing: Overloading a website with keywords in an attempt to manipulate search rankings.
2. Hidden text or links: Hiding text or links on a website to manipulate search rankings.
3. Doorway pages: Creating pages specifically for search engines, rather than users, with the goal of ranking for specific keywords.
4. Link buying or selling: Purchasing or selling links to manipulate search rankings.
5. Cloaking: Delivering different content to search engines than to users.
6. Duplicate content: Copying content from other websites in an attempt to manipulate search rankings.
7. Spamming: Engaging in aggressive or irrelevant promotion tactics, such as comment spamming or excessive link building.
8. Hacking: Hacking other websites to manipulate search rankings.

What is the black hat SEO?

The black hat SEO characterizes a set of practices qualified as dishonest aimed at bringing up a website in the search engine results. Concretely, the black hat SEO brings together all the actions that can help optimize the visibility of a site without creating any value for the user.

Going against the guidelines of Google without worrying about the need of the Internet user, these practices are a reason for banishment from search engines.

In contrast, good SEO practices such as optimizing a title, optimizing the loading speed, or your content has a direct positive impact on the user experience.

To summarize : 

• The black hat SEO does not create any value for the user but can gain visibility
• The “good” SEO focuses on the needs of the user and increases visibility

Why should you be wary of black hat SEO?

The black hat SEO can ban your website from all search engines. Even if it can bring quick results in the short term, Google very often ends up detecting dishonest techniques and has no qualms about penalizing them.

Avoid black hat SEO at all costs, unless the survival of your business is not part of your business objectives. Indeed, in 2020 more than ever, natural traffic guarantees a significant supply of qualified leads. And for some industries like online sales, a ban on search engines can simply precipitate the bankruptcy of a business.

You will see, even the most prominent companies have sometimes resorted to black hat SEO techniques.

Some common examples of black hat SEO

The accumulation of keywords

According to Google,

“Keyword accumulation is the practice of flooding a web page with keywords or numbers in order to manipulate a site’s ranking in Google search results. Often these keywords appear in a list or group, or out of context (not as natural text). “

How to do it well? 

According to good web writing practices, the density of the main keyword of your page should be between 0.5% and 1.5%. This means that for a text of 600 words, your main keyword should ideally appear at least 3 times and, if possible, in prominent places, like the title, the first paragraph, or a subtitle.

Above all, to optimize your chances of seeing your content go up in Google, your star keyword should be accompanied by a whole team of words commonly associated with its semantics.

Hidden content or cloaking

Hidden content, commonly called “cloaking” in SEO, consists of offering different content to Internet users than that which is visible by search engines.

This black hat SEO technique is often used by spam websites. For example, a site offering dubious gambling that does not want to risk writing content about its activity could optimize its site around board games to attract “innocent” users. Once this traffic recovers, it would be enough to include some videos in its content to invite some of its visitors to its questionable activity.

Example of hidden content: Spotify

Misleading or duplicated content

Duplicate content is still a widely used technique for optimizing the visibility of a website. This black hat SEO technique does not require any advanced computer skills, except mastery of CTRL + C / CTRL + V. Google is doing everything it can to stop serial “plagiarists,” even if the vast majority manage to copy just enough of your content to fall between the cracks.

The misleading content is similar to the hidden content.

The principle is simple: once a page is displayed in Google for a particular term, the author completely modifies the content of the page in question while keeping the same SEO title and the same meta description. Internet users are then deceived, just like Google.

Example of misleading content: Groupon