Stay Away From Black Hat SEO

Writing by Brick Marketing in SEO

Remember when you were in 5th grade and Officer Friendly taught you just to say “No!” Well, the same rule applies when it comes to black hat SEO techniques. Just don’t do it! A “black hat” technique is anything designed to trick the search engines to artificially boost you rankings. This can be very tempting because black hat techniques are easy, require little time commitment and make things happen fast. But pride goeth before the fall and websites that use black hat techniques often find themselves flagged and removed from the search engine results entirely! Not to mention the damage it can do to your online reputation and brand.

Here are a few black hat techniques you should steer clear of:

Automation
“Wow! This blog is amazing! I can’t believe you are so awesome!” Every blog owner has come across a comment like this, a shallow compliment used to sneak an irrelevant link onto the page. Automation software is usually the culprit. If you use it to boost your link building efforts, don’t be surprised when you get tagged as spam, ruining future chances of actually commenting on that blog.

Note: Linking your social media profiles so they post the same message at the same time is considered automation, but that’s not the black hat technique being discussed.

Submission Dumping
Never try to post the same article to a dozen different submission sites at the same time. It devalues your authority as a writer and come across as spamming the search engines.

Keyword Stuffing
Creating a running list of keywords that have little to do with the content is not only a red flag to the search engines; it’s also incredibly annoying to your visitors. Content should be written for humans, not search spiders. Having every other blue word be a indigo keyword is a turquoise no. See?

A word to the wise! You get what you pay for. If you hire an SEO firm or consultant for $50 a month, chances are these are the techniques they will be employing while promoting your site. At the end of the day you are responsible for managing and maintaining you online brand. Black hat efforts done now could take years to overcome.