A 2019 study reveals that around 59% of small businesses in Australia don’t have a website. Because of several factors such as cost and time, most businesses prefer to rely on traditional marketing techniques.
However, it was also found that roughly 47% of these businesses plan to build a website within the next year. Owners admit that they would be more eager to get one if they can use a user-friendly website builder or if they can easily hire a professional designer to do it.
With this prediction, these owners should also be aware of SEO Sydney services in Australia that can help manage their website’s needs.
However, some people might be tempted to find shortcuts to increase their web performance. Following these techniques can only damage the goals you have for your business.
What Is Black Hat SEO and Why Is It Harmful
Black Hat SEO are practices that go against the website ranking standards of search engines. These methods ignore the user’s intent and cheat the search engine’s algorithm to have better web visibility.
In the long run, Black Hat SEO can only do more harm than good to a website’s credibility. Here are some of the reasons why these tactics are harmful and should be avoided at all costs:
- It leads to penalization or banning of the website. Since these practices go against the search engine’s guidelines, there is a high chance that these websites will be ranked lower or even be removed entirely from the SERPs.
- The results are only short-term. Black hat strategies take advantage of loopholes in the search engine. Since these browsers are always updated and fixed regularly for bugs and loopholes, the results of these poor methods disappear as fast as they came.
- It misleads the users. Applying these black hat tactics make websites more difficult to navigate. It usually creates a poor and confusing user experience which leads to disengagement.
SEO Practices to Avoid for Better SERP Ranking
Most Black Hat SEO practices are aimed to bypass most of the search engine’s requirements. Despite the instant benefits that it can do for your website, it is best to avoid doing them altogether and adhere to safe and reliable methods as done by SEO Sydney services in Australia.
Some of these Black Hat strategies include:
- Keyword Stuffing
In an attempt to rank their website for the topic of the target term, the keyword is purposely repeated several times in the content. When the keyword density is very high, it is easily detected by the search engine and can lead to dire consequences.
- Cloaking
This is another black hat technique used to cheat the search engines algorithm to rank the website’s content for a particular keyword that is not related to the context of the webpage at all. Through this method, the users are presented with different content than the one displayed in the search engine results.
- Publishing Low Quality and Duplicated Content
To cut on costs and beat the search engine’s system, website owners publish cheap, low-quality, and irrelevant content. They can go as far as duplicating content from other websites and publishing them without copyright.
- Using Link Farms or Excessive Link Exchanging
The Black Hat marketer uses link farms or pays private blog networks to have links to other websites that can improve their search ranking.
- Hidden Texts and Misleading Links
Website publishers use several techniques to hide keywords in their web pages. These include setting the font size to zero, using a white font on white background, positioning text off-screen, or adding a link to a single character.
Moreover, they can mislead users by setting up redirect links that open low-ranking different web pages.
- Manipulating Structured Data
A special code called schema markup or structured data is added to the website to dictate what information will be displayed in SERPs. Black Hat SEO abuses this feature to display false and misleading information to the users.
- Adding Too Many Ads
A website that has too many annoying ads ruins the user experience and slows down your website speed. These ads are usually placed all over the webpage, making it impossible not to click them accidentally.
Once you encounter websites that use the discussed Black Hat tactics above, you may file a report to the search engine’s complaint section. After some time, they will be removed or even permanently banned.
Make sure to adhere to following search engine regulations and best practices to boost your SERP ranking accordingly.
