8 Black Hat SEO Techniques to Avoid Like the Plague in 2024

Let's start with a simple question: what is the number one factor that could make or break the success of your website?

If you answered “SEO”, you are absolutely correct.

It's not that I'm a big fan of SEO, but when done right, search engines like Google send you a ton of visitors (and sales) to your sites over time. If you are new to blogging or SEO, you may feel frustrated that the SEO be complicated.

Practicing poor SEO techniques can hurt your site's reputation, both in terms of search traffic and readership.

So in this article, we are going to discuss some dangerous black hat SEO techniques that some bloggers are still practicing and that you should avoid like the plague if you want to get better at SEO.

Are you ready ? Let's get into the details.

Contents :

What is black hat SEO?

These are bad search engine optimization practices such as building links from spammy sites, creating duplicate content, keyword stuffing, etc.

This is a deprecated practice aimed at increasing domain authority and a site's traffic in search engine results pages (SERPs). These practices are against search engine rules and can result in a site being banned from search engines.

Black hat optimization gets your website banned from Google. You can get short-term results by increasing traffic to your site if you implement these techniques, but Google penalizes them heavily, which has a huge impact on your website.

If you want to build lasting search traffic, you need to avoid the techniques you'll learn about in this in-depth article.

Why should black hat SEO be avoided?

You might be wondering if black hat SEO helps build your domain authority, so why avoid it? This may impress search engine crawlers in the short term (but NOT in the long term) but never impress your readers and in the long term your site will definitely be penalized because of these bad SEO practices.

Search engines target sites that use “black hat” SEO techniques and remove sites that use these techniques because their goal is to provide the most useful content to searchers for a given query. If the search engine algorithm catches your site, it will be penalized and cannot recover.

When you provide fabulous and useful content to your readers, you should avoid black hat SEO anyway. To prevent your site from being banned and penalized by search engines, be sure to avoid these bad SEO techniques if you want to increase search traffic and sales for your website.

Black Hat SEO techniques to avoid in 2024

Avoid low quality content

With Google's algorithm update, it's necessary to focus on analyzing the quality of your site's content. Previously, only links and keywords were important, but now the quality of content matters a lot.

If the content on your site is low quality, chances are it will hurt your search engine rankings. If you are able to recognize this low quality content on your site, then you may see a significant increase in your search engine rankings.

If you have a lot of pages on your site, manually checking and analyzing the content takes a lot of time. Fortunately, there are tools to perform this task. Follow this step-by-step guide to find low-quality content and remove it.

Use Screaming Frog to explore your site : First of all, you need to get the list of all the contents on your site. To do this, simply go to Screaming Frog, click on “configuration” then “spider”. In Basic Options, make sure all boxes are unchecked. Now check “crawl all subdomains” to get all the pages on your site. Once you have set all these options, submit the URL of your blog in “URL to spider” at the top. Now press the “Start” button.

Once the crawl is done, you will get tons of data which is organized according to the URL of each individual page. Now start auditing.

Know what thin content is: If you have poorly optimized site-wide metadata and zig-zag URLs, you need to fix it now.

Here's how to understand what poor quality content is:

• Content that doesn't get organic traffic.
• Content that is not well ranked.
• Content that has no social shares.
• Content under 1000 words is thin content.

Word count is also a potential indicator for spotting low-quality content.

How to identify low quality content on your site?

Go to screaming frog, then to “internal tab” and sort your pages by word count. Then export this data to a CSV file and start working on it. Set aside pages under 1500 words

The text must have a very good reason for being so short. Here are some valid reasons:

• If the short content URL is a category page or a 404 page, it is not a piece of content and are not important search engine ranking factors.
• If this URL is a specific question answer page, merge it with the main page and redirect it.
• If the URL is a product page with images and product description, go to the specific amazon link and populate the page with a lot more additional content.

Short content is still the thin content, but you can extend it with much more in-depth content.

That being said, you can now get down to business, filtering thin URLs. Let's go to the next step.

Decide what to do with it: Now that you have thin content, analyze metrics like social shares, inbound links, traffic, etc. Analyze parameters such as social shares, inbound links, traffic. Use your analysis software to collect this data.

Once the data is collected, here's what you can do:

• If a piece of content isn't getting any traffic, links, social sharing, or is duplicated on another site, delete it. Or
• Merge content with other related content. Or
• Improve content.

Take action: Before making any content changes you want, back up your site. Take snapshots of your top traffic and search engine ranking metrics. Also identify other issues that affect your SEO, such as image names, metadata, URL structure, site speed, etc.

Then edit your content. Once you've completed this step, create a comprehensive sitemap and upload it to Google Webmaster Tools. This is to ensure that updates and new content are indexed by search engines. Monitor your traffic.

Avoid keyword stuffing

To rank higher in the SERPs, most people use the keyword stuffing method, which involves inserting keywords into the content. Previously, this method was accepted when there were few websites, but this is no longer the case today. Nowadays, keyword stuffing is considered a poor SEO technique.

No one will read you if you keyword stuffing. This not only hurts your search engine rankings, but also the readership of your blog.

So how do you naturally use your main keywords?

It's best not to focus on keyword density. Write your blog posts without focusing on your keywords. Once you are done writing, you can use your primary and secondary keywords sparingly. You can use tools like WordPress SEO by Yoast (free plugin for WordPress users) to properly optimize your content.

Instead of using the same keyword over and over again, use long tail keywords and LSI keywords because they tend to send you more search and ranking traffic to your sites.

Other recommended articles:

• Blog Post Length: How long should a blog post be?
• Why The First 6 Months Of Blogging Are The Hardest [What To Do For Success]
• Top 8 Backlink Checker Tools (Free & Premium)
• 10 Blogging Mistakes Beginners Should Avoid
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• 23 essential tools for success in blogging

Avoid link exchanges

Backlinks are very important for SEO, but these backlink exchange programs are not recommended if you really want to achieve high domain authority and ranking in search engine results. In general, these link exchange programs are the easiest way to generate massive traffic, but wait, it only works for a short period of time.

They lower your reputation in Google's index. Never trade links without knowing the quality and content of the site you are adding. If you link to a site that is already irrelevant to Google, it will hurt your site's reputation.

No successful blogger uses link exchange programs. If you don't believe it, check out their sites.

They only focus on writing great content and adding value to their readers. So, the best way to get relevant and quality links is to write great and unique content. If the content is useful, chances are another blogger will link to it

Why are link exchange programs harmful?

In addition to lowering your site's ranking, by linking your site to another's, you are telling readers that the link is of good quality and that they find something useful and valuable there.

So when your readers click on your link exchange link and they are taken to an irrelevant website and ads to play rummy, earn money online, they feel like the content of your blog is really bad. They lose trust in your site.

So what is the alternative to that?

• Social networks : Yes, they are the biggest source of traffic for any site. Your content will be broadcast in seconds to millions of readers and will get shares if the content is very useful and unique. So always focus on creating quality content that is also unique.
• Network with other bloggers: Not only will you learn from them, but you will also find great content.
• Increase the number of your followers: Be active on social networking sites and bookmarking websites and increase the number of your followers.
• Invest time in your writing: Don't waste your time feeding your site with spammy, untrustworthy links. Instead of spending time finding sites for such links, invest time in writing quality content.

Avoid spinning article

Article marketing has become an effective way to build a large number of backlinks. But using automatic article spinning software is an underground SEO technique. If not avoided, it seriously damages the ranking and authority of the website.

Why avoid the spinning article?

• Search engines love fresh content. Sites that publish fresh and timely content rank well. But when you create spinned content, your site gets penalized or flagged as spam in search results.
• Article spinning software produces unreadable versions: Article spin software produces low quality content. You can simply rewrite the articles manually. And you know it takes the same time to write a new article. When you write yourself by doing research, your content will be more valuable than the article produced by software.
• The idea is the same, but the sentences are different: Article spin software creates different versions of a single article. The spinners replace the original words with different synonyms. It is like saying the same thing in different ways. There is nothing new for your readers to learn. Empower your readers with helpful content.
• You will lose your credibility: If you use software to write an article, it will hurt your credibility online.
• Google can recognize if you use software to write: Yes, major search engines like Yahoo and Google can detect low quality content. Google's panda update can detect spun articles.
• Using software or an article spinner does not make you a writer: Article filtering software limits your creativity.
• It is labeled as duplicate: When you write different versions of the same content, Google marks your content as duplicate. And when the search engine finds that your content is duplicated, it penalizes your site.

So stop using article spinning software to generate content. Instead, use your creativity to write.

Avoid landing pages

These are low quality pages that are optimized for certain particular keywords. These pages are not intended to improve SEO and provide no added value to your readers. Here is an in-depth guide I wrote a while back on penalizing passing pages.

Google has officially announced that if you have entry pages, your page may no longer rank. This is because these pages prevent users from getting the right information and disrupt the search experience.

In this case, what can you do?

• If they offer no value to your readers, delete them.
• Rewrite them in a way that they are readable and solve your readers' problems.

How do you know if your site has landing pages or not?

These pages are optimized for a product category and do not contain any link to the article in question. They redirect the user to another page.

When sites optimize their landing pages for a specific keyword, the user gets frustrated. Google always wants to provide the best search experience to its users. It will introduce a ranking adjustment that will penalize sites that use poor SEO techniques.

So rather than spending time optimizing landing pages, write content that helps users.

Avoid blog comment spam

To build relationships with other bloggers, blog comments are one of the best ways. If you leave comments after reading the entire article, it sure helps build your relationship, but if it's spam, it hurts your brand.

Most importantly, stop accepting spam comments on your blog posts and pages. Spam comments can hurt your search engine rankings because you provide access to links that have nothing to do with your site and contain stuffed keywords.

How do I stop blog comment spam?

• Use comment systems like Disqus ou Live Guys. There are also specialized services from Facebook and Google+ that can replace your blog's built-in commenting system. This keeps the conversation going on your site and eliminates spam.
• Use the spam filter Akismet. This will give you full control over conversations and data. It is a plugin integrated into WordPress. Just activate it to filter 99,8% of spam. To find the remaining 0,2%, check the links in the comment if you receive a legitimate comment from a user.
• Be sure to check every comment before approving it on your blog. Also don't allow comments without gravatars. Most comments without gravatars contain spam and you should avoid accepting such comments.

Avoid invisible and small text links

It is not possible to see hidden or invisible texts. Search engines love pages with lots of content. Some people like pages with graphics, animations, and special effects, but Google can't crawl those pages.

This is why some search engine crawlers have a habit of deliberately writing content on the user's website so that the user cannot see it, but search engines can crawl it.

The text takes on the same color as the background, making it invisible. Visitors won't find the text, but search engines will. But today, search engines consider it to be keyword stuffing, which puts you in trouble.

CSS can hide text from users but can make it accessible to search engines.

Google detects such practices because it has advanced algorithms to detect all stuffed keywords as well as bad keywords and links stuffed with irrelevant keywords.

Invisible text is accepted to some extent in cases where screen readers can describe an image to a blind or visually impaired user. It is best to avoid such practices to be safe in Google's search results.

Avoid paid links as much as possible

Backlinks are necessary if you want your site to rank well, but many website owners buy these links and there are many websites that give links if you pay a reasonable amount for them.

Before buying paid links, know what Google thinks about paid links.

• He knows what paid links are and has a online form official website that allows bloggers to report paid links to Google.
• Google and other search engines use these links to determine a site's reputation. The ranking of a site is partly based on the analysis of the sites that link to it.
• When evaluating a website, Google takes into account the quality of the links on it. So it performs link-based analysis.
• By buying or selling links that do not have domain authority, you violate Google's webmaster guidelines and affect your site's ranking in search results.

If you don't want to get in trouble with Google, avoid paid links. If you do buy or sell links anyway, make sure they contain the rel=”nofollow” attribute. This attribute tells the search engine that you are using the links for advertising purposes only and not for page ranking.

Try to get quality links from authoritative sites by building relationships with top bloggers in your niche and writing helpful guest posts instead of buying paid links to manipulate page rankings in the search results, which Google hates.

FAQs around Black Hat SEO techniques 2024

Here are some of the most frequently asked questions about black hat SEO techniques.

Other Resources:

• How to re-optimize your blog content to increase your search traffic?
• The best essential SEO blogs to improve your SEO
• Top 25 SEO Tips and Tricks That REALLY Work
• How to Configure All In One SEO Pack on WordPress
• 100 SEO Glossary Terms For Beginners To Know

Final reflections

SEO is a strategy that takes time. If you want to get better results, start with the basics and don't take shortcuts.

If you want long-term results from search engines, avoid the techniques mentioned above at all costs. They are not going to harm your site, but they are also killing its online reputation and readership.

What do you think of this detailed article? What other black hat SEO techniques do you think have not been mentioned in this article? Share your views in the comments below.