In the world of search engine optimization (SEO), there are many gray areas and misconceptions about legitimate SEO techniques, and those that have been proven over time but do not follow. not the rules.

Black Hat SEO?

Just as cowboys wear white and black hats to differentiate “good guys” from “bad guys”, “white hat SEO” and “black hat SEO” denote good and bad SEO practices:

White hat SEO

The White Hats are the heroes and use tactics that work according to the rules put in place by search engines to improve a site’s ranking in search engine results pages (SERPs).

Black hat SEO        

Black Hats are the bad guys and use techniques that can help a site rank higher on search engine results pages, but are unethical and violate search engine guidelines.

Understanding what is what when it comes to SEO best practices is essential to maintaining your website integrity, your page rankings in the SERPS, and your visibility.

Before you begin, here’s a quick reminder of the “White Hat SEO” techniques you can use to play by the rules and improve your site’s ranking in search results:

  • Quality content
  • Relevant keywords for the content
  • Keyword rich page titles and metadata
  • Light code / well-structured markup language
  • Incoming Links ( backlinks ) authoritative
  • Simple website navigation
  • Fast page load times

And now here are some of the most common “Black Hat SEO” tactics to avoid to increase your website visibility:

  • Keyword stuffing
  • Cloaking
  • Link farming
  • Content concealment

4 “Black Hat” SEO techniques

Keyword stuffing

Keyword stuffing involves placing keywords unnaturally in your content as well as in web page meta-tags, page titles, or link anchors.

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It’s really easy to set up, but has no positive impact on your SEO. In fact, search engine crawlers are no longer so dumb, and might turn away from your site.

Cloaking

Cloaking is the art of placing hidden content for the human visitor, but not for bots.

A piece of code identifies a robot and gives it to digest a page stuffed with keywords. It may have worked in the past, but search algorithms have gotten smarter.

Site owners who engage in this route will be subject to a heavy penalty and / or the site may find itself deindexed.

Link Farming

Link farming is a process of accumulating a series of website backlinks that are often hidden from visitors.

Some software allows you to create dozens of websites on the fly (on generally free platforms) and fill these sites with content comprising links between them but also of course, links to your website.

Getting listed on such pages won’t get you traffic – in fact, it potentially puts you at risk of having your site flagged.

Content concealment

Hiding content is a lot like electronic bait. Search engine crawlers see content that does not actually appear in the user’s browser. This technique is different from cloaking because the robot and the visitor are indeed on the same page.

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Here, it’s more basic: the crawler is deceived by little CSS tricks like writing with a 0px font or in white on a white background, placing text behind an image …

The result is the same as for the above techniques: null and potentially harmful to your site.

Wear the white hat

SEO can help or hinder the success of your site, depending on what hat you choose to wear.

“White hat SEO” is powerful, delivers relevant content, is a pledge of credibility for your site and therefore promotes conversions. It is the best guarantee that your site will progress in the SERPS in an honorable and legitimate way.

The “Black hat SEO” mentioned here no longer works, but this article only summarizes the harmful and unnecessary techniques. It can also be very effective, but is still fraught with perils – penalties, site dereferences, high bounce rate, poor user experience, and lost conversion opportunities.

So make sure you are well informed about the techniques you choose to implement in order to choose the right ones. If necessary, call on a freelance SEO NYC specialist to assist you in the referencing of your site.