Michigan SEO Company Explains the Dangers of Black Hat Techniques

What Are Black Hat SEO Techniques?

Sometimes called web spam, black hat techniques are SEO strategies that do not follow Google’s Guidelines. These techniques tend to focus more on the search engines than actual user experience.

Some black hat techniques may include hidden text, keyword stuffing, doorway pages or purchasing links. You can read more about these black hat techniques by reviewing the Quality Guidelines under Google Webmaster Tools.

Some Michigan SEO Companies choose black hat techniques because they can provide an increase in Google ranking with minimal effort and in a shorter period of time than white hat techniques. Although black hat SEO may provide results initially, these results are typically short lived and will not stand the test of time.

Google is constantly adjusting their algorithm to eliminate spam in order to provide the best search results to it’s users. Spammy, black hat SEO techniques will be addressed in these algorithm updates, resulting in a significant decrease in ranking or even worse yet, your site could be banned from Google.

What Are White Hat SEO Techniques?

White hat SEO is Search Engine Optimization that maintains the integrity of your site and follows Google’s guidelines.

Some examples of white hat SEO would be making sure that your pages are crawlable, posting quality content that is relevant to a particular keyword/keyphrase , increasing site speed, and building natural backlinks.

Of course building natural links will take more time and effort than the black hat approach of buying links. Just as posting unique, quality content is not as easy as creating spammy doorway pages. White hat SEO may take more time and effort but the results will be long lasting and you won’t need to worry about a drop in ranking or penalties from Google.

Not to mention if you are using white hat techniques, you are providing quality content for your visitors. This is where a lot of black hat SEOs fall short. They focus on pleasing the search engines and forget about pleasing people. The reality is if you optimize your site with people in mind you are actually giving Google what it wants, quality content that is relevant to a users search.

My Competitors Use Black Hat SEO and Their Site Ranks Well

It may be tempting to think, hey my competitors use black hat techniques and they outrank me. If black hat techniques work, then why should I be concerned about following Google’s guidelines?

Remember black hat techniques might provide results right off of the bat, but in the long run, your rankings will drop and your site can be banned from Google. So although you didn’t have to spend much time buying links or creating spammy content, what will you do when your rankings drop off or your site is banned? This will be a time-consuming mess to clean up. You will be much better off following Google’s guidelines from the start.

You may be wondering how Google will be able to tell if you are not following their guidelines. As mentioned earlier, Google is constantly tweaking their algorithm to eliminate low quality, spammy content from the search results. Something else to consider, is that if anyone notices you are using black hat techniques, they can actually report you. So your competitors could even report your site as spam to help expedite the process of your site getting banned!

In the video below, Google engineer, Matt Cutts explains the importance of using white hat SEO and encourages people to report their competitors to Google if they are using black hat techniques.