Black Hat SEO Beginners Guide – Don’t Use Bad SEO

Duplicate Content

Don’t duplicate your own content. If you have one article ranking for a keyword, don’t create another one. If you do, you will dilute the ranking of both articles. Never copy anyone’s work and try to use it as your own. Google wants good original content. That is what ranks well. You want to give readers a good high quality post to read. Then, over time people will link to your content. If you want to use some well written content that you feel you just can’t write better yourself, then use it as a quote, and list the source. Give credit to the original creator, that is fine.

Scraping and Spinning Content

There are many tools that scrape content, and spin content and claim they are great for search engines. Don’t use them. Google is getting pretty good at recognizing all of them. That kind of Black Hat SEO Technique used to fool the search engines, not any more.

PLR Content

PLR stands for (Public Label Rights) I don’t recommend using this content either. The PLR rights allow you to use the content as your own. The problem with that, is everyone else can buy the same content and use it as well. If you use PLR content, you must rewrite it. Otherwise, your content is a duplicate of everyone else who is using it.

Hidden Text

Make sure you are transparent always, don’t try to hide text. Links sending people to a different site, or page is illegal. They are cloaking links. Sometimes, people would make the text the same color as their background color, and only the search engines would see it. Hidden text is penalized! Do not use any site redirects to take people somewhere that is not relevant to your search keyword. 

Clickbait Titles

Don’t create catchy titles just to get people to click, and then take them to an article that is not relevant. Relevancy is the most important thing in good content. People want to find what they are searching for, not some unrelated product you are trying to sell. If you do this, expect your rankings to fall, and you will likely get penalized. Facebook will remove ads just for what they consider is a clickbait title. If you continue to do it, they will shut down your ad account as well. When Facebook shuts your ad account down, you may never get it back again.

Keyword Stuffing

A term that many beginners are familiar with if they have studied any SEO at all. Before the Panda algorithm, you could just put keywords in every sentence to rank better! That is Keyword Stuffing. Don’t use your keywords for any more than 2-3% of your article. Use your keywords effectively and wisely. Don’t overdo it. For good SEO rankings, be sure to include your keywords in your H1 and H2 headings. Only use a H1 heading one time in every article! It is ok if you have a couple H2 titles.

Too Many Alt Tags

When you place a description about your images for the screen readers to use, you help the visually handicapped. Screen readers will read these “Alt tags” and play a voice message out loud for the visually handicapped. They can then hear your description of the image on your site. It is fine if you add your keyword in the description, but don’t overdo it. Use it in a normal conversation, not repeated over and over again. Just to be sure, leave a few descriptions without using any keywords. These “Alt Tag” descriptions are not visible. But, the search bots, and screen readers will see them all.

Paid Links

This is when websites pay for links that point back to their site. Their are plenty of companies who claim their links are White Hat Links. Don’t believe it! It is illegal to purchase links to your website. Do not use any paid links. Avoid all the companies that sell you links and claim it will increase your ranking in a month. If Google shuts their site down, You will lose all those links anyway.

Gateway or Doorway Pages

You have unwittingly experienced these pages. They are pages that contain lots of links, and look like search pages, but once you click the link, it takes you to more pages with more links. It creates traffic and give the site owner more time spent on his site. But they are a terrible user experience. And have no content value. The only purpose is for increasing rankings. Google does not like them either. They do not generate any revenue for Google, and create a bad user experience. If Google doesn’t like it, don’t do it.

Fake Reviews

Don’t post fake reviews on your site. Affiliates sometimes post glowing reviews when they have not purchased the products. If you haven’t used the product, say so. Explain why you can tell by your experience, why the product is good or bad. People who claim to have used products and never did, are fake reviews. Sometimes, people have used very similar products and can describe their similar experiences.

Comment Links

If you comment on an article written by someone else, it is bad practice to place a link back to your site. when you respond to comment on your own site, placing a link to refer to your own relevant articles is fine. Google does not like people dropping links on other websites.