Avoid these black hat techniques in 2022

Not everyone practises SEO in a proper way. They’re a bit of a bunch of rogues… Black Hat techniques do work, but if Google finds out, you run the risk of being penalised. You’re walking a tightrope, but is it all worth it?

Knit straight again later

The effects of SEO usually only become noticeable after 3 to 6 months. The impatient among us want quick results and aren’t averse to using some Black Hat techniques. To put us at ease, they say they’ll switch back to White Hat techniques later on. Yeah, right…

Which black hat techniques will you need to put right from 2022 onwards?

1) Buying backlinks

On a daily basis, SEO Ninja receives “offers” to buy links on websites with high domain authority. Of course, Google cannot tell whether you have paid for a backlink. However, it does look suspicious if you receive hundreds of backlinks within 24 hours without having published any interesting new content. Google is getting smarter all the time and is now better at recognising suspicious behaviour. 

Alternatively, we recommend investing in high-quality content publication. Write articles that your target audiences are eager to read, and as a natural consequence, you’ll gain plenty of new backlinks. Furthermore, these backlinks are much more relevant, meaning the backlink profile you build will be of a higher quality. 

2) Unnecessary use of keywords

You’ve probably come across this before: web pages that repeat keywords over and over again. The text isn’t a pleasure to read, because it’s crammed full of keywords in a very unnatural way. Google can spot this sort of thing a mile off and consequently penalises such pages in the rankings. This Black Hat technique is called ‘keyword stuffing’. 

So what can you do? Of course, you need to take into account the keywords that are most important to you, but write with your key target audiences in mind. Also, make sure to use plenty of keyword variations. This ‘long-tail’ tactic ensures you can be found for many more keywords. What’s more, the quality of your visitors is much higher, as they’ll find the information they’re actively searching for. 

3) Spam comments

Blogs and forums provide a platform for user-generated content. Visitors can comment on articles and include a link in their comments. Many websites add a rel=nofollow-attribute to the hyperlink, but many websites still do not do this. This could be of interest for link building. Google is going to monitor this more actively and will detect any suspicious activity. You should steer well clear of anything that looks suspicious.

Does that mean you should never comment? Of course not, but make sure your comments are actually worth reading. Don’t just flood as many blogs and forums as possible; make sure you’re making a valuable contribution to the community. That way, you’ll naturally stand out in a positive way. 

4) Article Spinning

If you write a new article in which you reuse existing text almost entirely, this is called ‘article spinning’. A search engine like Google is looking for new content. A new article made up of existing text, rephrased ever so slightly, has no news value. Google is getting smarter all the time and will spot it if you try to pull the wool over its eyes. 

If you really want to stand out, make the effort to look for new perspectives. Brainstorm with your team, interview existing customers and suppliers, look for trends and explore them in depth. 

5) Negative SEO

If you want to outshine your main competitors by directing a large number of low-quality links towards them, this is known as negative SEO. Google penalises websites with a very large number of low-quality backlinks.

This technique is underhand. Why not spend that time instead on securing high-quality backlinks for your own website or writing high-quality articles? That will ultimately pay off much more. 

Black Hat techniques sound appealing. They can help you attract high visitor numbers, but the quality of that traffic is so low that it converts poorly. What’s more, you run the risk of being penalised by Google. Just stick to White Hat tactics. Not sure how? We’d be happy to help you with that.