In its continued zeal to provide the best user experience when searching relevant information over the internet, Google continues to upgrade its search engine algorithms like Google Panda and the recent Google Penguin 2.0. These measures are in sync with Google’s policy to crack down on aggressive, illegal and immoral Black Hat SEO techniques employed by many webmasters, to boost their website rankings during search engine results. People looking at short-term high return models in terms of enhancing their Page Rankings (PR) during search engine results resort to Black Hat tactics without thinking of long term consequences.
Unethical Black Hat Strategies Vs Accepted White Hat SEO Practices
As opposed to White Hat techniques which pay more attention to constructive SEO practices such as link building, appropriate keyword analysis and providing relevant content pertaining to search results; Black Hat SEO tactics focus more on the search engines rather than the requirements of the human web traffic. Additionally, every webmaster has the legal option to enhance their web presence through basic web optimizing practices such as including TITLE and ALT element for graphic posts, incorporating Meta tags for explanations, using Google XML sitemap generator plugin (including image and video sitemaps submission) for enhancing Google crawl rate, and introducing exclusive title tags for each webpage.
Top 10 Black Hat SEO Malpractices Penalized By Google
1)Cloaking refers to the most widely prevalent Black Hat malpractice of misleading the search engines by displaying different discussion thread to Google and then redirecting your web traffic to a different website altogether as soon as your web users click on the search engine result link. However, Google uses its Panda or Penguin search engine algorithms to detect such dubious activities, and once caught, the guilty websites are penalized in terms of web rankings and sometimes even expelled from the search engine altogether.
2)Link exchanges of reciprocal links were a popular SEO technique in the earlier days. However, they now mostly contribute in creating a horde of low quality and irrelevant links in a short span of time, but do not enhance your web rankings. These are a waste of your time which can be instead fruitfully utilized to building links naturally.
3)Duplicate or copied content, one of the most unethical Black Hat SEO techniques; can be effectively filtered with every Google algorithm modification that indexes genuine content only once and discards copied web content.
4)Websites selling paid links in the virtual world can be traced by Google’s Penguin 2.0 update and are heavily fined. The websites indulging in such shortcut SEO techniques by buying these paid links to increase their rankings are also penalized by Google.
5)Keyword stuffing or usage of excessive keywords, an effective SEO practice in the yesteryears, is now considered being an annoying distraction to both the search engines and the human web traffic. Instead, posting relevant and meaningful articles and appropriate keyword density should be adhered to using a suitable number of keyword Meta tags.
6)The policy of hidden text incorporating same color (usually white) text on same color (white) background contribute to keyword stuffing and can be detected by Google Bots that are able to trace even minute errors in your source codes. It is advisable to check your website security measures before Google penalizes you for hidden text malpractice.
7)Link farms exist solely to provide a host of irrelevant hyperlinks linking to the targeted website in a bid to increase link popularity through link exchanges. Google is not too fond of link farms and such malpractices can adversely affect your web rankings.
8)Article spinning, copying content from another web source and using it as your own are some of the prevalent web spam methods employed by blogs when writing for search engines. However, Google Panda’s recent update is perfectly capable of detecting and removing such spam articles from web index and rankings. Hence, it is better focus on writing applicable content for the targeted viewers.
9)Over-optimization through SEO can decrease your web rankings ultimately.
10) Low quality content can raise questions on your online reputation and your website integrity, and you stand to fall out on rankings through spun content, and can redirect your web traffic to sites offering fresh and genuine articles.
