What Is Black Hat SEO?

Black Hat SEO: What Is It?

Go to the top

Black hat SEO encompasses tactics and strategies that go against a search engine’s guidelines, including Google. Website owners use black hat SEO techniques to manipulate search results to improve their site’s rankings.

It’s a similar practice to parasite SEO which works to manipulate rankings via a third-party site.

➡️ I recommend checking out our SEO glossary page to learn more about other popular terms.

Should You Use Black Hat SEO?

Go to the top

The simple answer is no, you shouldn’t use black hat SEO on your website. It’s not technically illegal, but it does go against Google’s guidelines. And, if you’re trying to improve your visibility in the SERPs, do you really want to get on Google’s bad side?

Nowadays, it’s very easy to get caught if you’re practicing black hat SEO, no matter the size of your business. For example, Forbes Advisor has recently been penalized with drops in rankings. Google’s algorithm updates work to promote helpful content to its readers – spammy and low-quality content will not be tolerated for long.

If you choose to use black hat SEO techniques, you do so at your own risk. It’s very likely your site will face a penalty action at some point, and it could be as severe as being removed from search results completely.

There’s also grey hat SEO to be aware of – if your SEO practices fall into a grey area between white hat and black hat SEO, this is still very risky and chances are you’ll get penalized for using this strategy.

Black Hat SEO Techniques To Avoid

Go to the top

Google – and other search engines – don’t approve of black hat SEO, so make sure your site isn’t implementing any of the risky tactics. Some examples of black hat SEO techniques to avoid include:

• Keyword stuffing and invisible keywords – Don’t force keywords into your content unnaturally or try to hide them within your page
• Copying content – You must create unique content since this will provide more value to readers as opposed to duplicating or copying content from elsewhere (such as competitor sites or using AI)
• Cloaking – This is where you create different content for search engines and users
• Misleading redirects – Like cloaking, sneaky redirects is where you send search engines to one page and regular visitors to another
• Paid links and link farming – Links to your website send signals to search engines and readers that your site is trustworthy and authoritative, so it’s bad SEO practice to spam or manipulate links between sites
• Abusing structured data – You should avoid misleading Google at all times, and adding fake information (such as listing the incorrect author to boost traffic) goes against its guidelines

My advice? Follow the rules set out by search engines and aim to provide genuinely helpful content to your readers. Most search engine guidelines revolve around providing a great user experience. You might not get results as quickly using white hat SEO techniques, but at least you won’t risk your website getting penalized forever. And, perhaps even more importantly for your brand’s reputation, you’ll avoid damaging how people view your website and business.