Many business owners now realize the importance of free search engine traffic and the impact of high search engine rankings on sales and profit. However, aiming for top positions for competitive keywords related to your products or services can be quite daunting at first. This is usually the reason why some business owners decide to take the black hat route. Be careful not to fall from Google’s grace, though. The following are five black hat SEO techniques you should avoid.
Targeting Irrelevant Keywords
Some business owners and marketers try to gain extra traffic from easy-to-rank, but unrelated keywords. While this technique may use white hat methods to gain top positions in the SERPs, the irrelevancy of the website content in relation to the targeted keywords may have negative consequences in the long run. It may result in having your website penalized from the search engines, or if done many times, may prompt Google employees to ban your web URL from the Google index.
Submitting Duplicate Content
Writing is a hard task and can be time-consuming. In an effort to build as many inbound links as possible, some marketers submit duplicate content to multiple article directories and web 2.0 blogs. Although posting duplicate content on external sites may not harm your website directly, it may affect its search engine rankings in the long run. Keep in mind that Google and other search engines check for duplicate content and unnatural linking patterns regularly. If you are using guest blogging as a form of link building, it is not ethical to submit a duplicate article as it may hurt the guest post host and your website as well.
Link Farming
In the past, link farming or link stuffing may have helped a lot of business owners gain high search engine rankings, but Google has become aware of the practice and started penalizing sites that have invested in link farm cultivation. It may seem like a good strategy to build thousands of inbound links instantly to fool the search engines, but the positive results are only short-lived. If you are aiming for extended search engine traffic benefits, make sure to invest in high quality links coming from authority sites related to your business. It may be time-consuming, but the results usually last longer.
Spamming
There are many forms of spamming all over the Internet. In relation to black hat SEO, comment and forum spamming are the most common, especially with WordPress sites. While some business owners take the time to write legitimate and unique comments under relevant blog posts, others use automated software to create many unnatural and usually irrelevant comments in an effort to build website links. Like link farming, this practice can backfire and cause you to lose search engine rankings as a result of having too many low-quality links from irrelevant websites.
Email Phishing
If you want to boost your online credibility, never attempt to use emails phishing techniques as these may lead your potential customers to have negative views about your business. Phishing emails are usually sent to thousands of recipients and normally land on spam folders. However, a lot of customers still check their spam folders to check miscategorized mails. These fraudulent emails contain messages that usually cause an urgent reaction from the recipients due to the “must-read” nature of the mail. The body of the email usually contains a cloaked linked that directs the clicker to the sender’s website. While this usually works, it is unethical and may even cause customers to write negative reviews about your business.
Once again, be sure not to lose Google’s favor. Never make use of black hat SEO techniques to promote your business. While you can benefit from these unethical methods at the start, the benefits are usually short-lived.
Author Bio:Joshua Turner is a writer who produces informative articles related to the field of business. This articles describes black hat SEO techniques and encourages further study with a Bachelor Degree in Business.