Tips to Steer Clear of Black Hat SEO

Do you think black hat SEO practices are illegal? No they are not! You will find a lot of SEO houses indulging in unscrupulous SEO tactics. The fact is black hat SEO is legal but not ethical. Following business ethics is the matter of integrity and everybody knows people who break the code of conduct can never be successful in the long run.

In this cruel business world where every competitor tries to pull your legs, sometimes it becomes really hard to steer clear of the black hat SEO. But beware! If you take the help of black hat practices once, you will have to rely on them forever. Once caught, it not only spoils your reputation but also affects your ranking. 

The best way is to be ethical from the start and avoid black hat SEO tricks to boost your search engine rankings. I am spotting some black hat techniques along with the tips to avoid them.

Avoid stuffing extra keywords


Some people stuff extra keywords in the content, e.g. in alt tags and in Meta tags which ruin the quality of content. As an end result, the content does not sound good and often times it is not easily understandable. This indicates you are very much conscious about SEO but you don’t really care about the quality of content being presented to your audience.

This is unethical because it misleads the audience. When Google finds out, it heavily penalizes you. The best way to make keyword stuffing ethical without damaging the quality of content is to use keywords in moderation.

Avoid generating useless content


Sometimes SEO companies concentrate on generating a lot of new content which is not useful for the audience and is rather used solely for linkbuilding. This is known as content farming and it offers zero educational value for the audience. This content is poorly written and sometimes is even plagiarized. The main reason is that quantity always damages quality. Most of the times, the content is not relevant because it is primarily written to increase rankings not to educate the audience.

Avoid writing a lot. Writing little but of good quality can surely generate massive traffic for your website so why bother yourself with excessive workload that can put your reputation at stake?
Avoid Google insulation

In order to push down bad reviews, many SEO specialists create new content in the favour of their websites. This content buries the negative comments of the competitors or customers. This is purely unethical because the new content is written by you, not your customers and it always contain positive reviews. Moreover, some companies post negative comments about their competitors to damage their ranking, it is also unethical.
The best way to burry the effect of negative publicity is by providing valuable services to the customers and raising the quality standards of your products.

Avoid Link farming


Link Spamming involves practices in which people create a webpage with so many unproductive links leading to their website. Though it is true, that the more are the links, the more is your value in search engines but that does not mean you build irrelevant links with irrelevant keywords from one page to another. Moreover, some SEO specialists even set up two versions of the page, one meant solely for the search engine spiders and other for real people, which is entirely unethical.

Avoid excessive irrelevant link building and always create only one version of the page. The traffic generated through productive link building is genuine and pays you good in the long run.

SEO is all about giving quality and relevance to the people. When you compromise on any one of the two, you are surely involved in black hat SEO. Follow the above tips and stay safe.

Author’s Bio:
Susan Smith a professional writer having many years experience in online wholesale trade and B2B marketing expert. She writes frequently on the topics related to Drop Shipping, distributors, wholesalers and trade suppliers.