Black hat SEO techniques should always be avoided as they can result in your site being penalized, such as being removed from search results. Here are five common techniques you should know about to avoid using black hat SEO techniques.
Hidden Text
This technique involves hiding text on a page so that it is invisible to users but visible to search engines. An example would be to use a grey background and write your keywords across the page in the same grey background colour so that the words blend in and are not visible to users. Do not use hidden text as it can be easily detected by search engines and you will be penalised.
Cloaking
Cloaking is the practice of displaying different content to different viewers. The most common cloaking method is to show images to human users but only HTML text to search engines. Search engines disapprove of this tactic because it displays a large amount of unwanted content, such as ads and malware, when users are expecting something else. Search engines are usually able to warn users about potentially malicious sites, but cloaking circumvents these precautions. When search engines detect cloaking, they penalize the page.
Private Blog Networks (PBNs), also known as Web Rings
PBNs, also known as web rings, work on the premise that having external links from other websites helps your search engine rankings. However, in this scenario, you own all the websites and you link them to each other. By linking to each other, the sites can boost each other's search rankings. This is a legitimate approach for people who own multiple sites, but becomes problematic if the sites are all the same and just want to funnel traffic to each other.
Keyword stuffing
Keyword stuffing takes advantage of the way search engine algorithms scan pages for keywords that are relevant to a searcher's query. This means arbitrarily repeating keywords for the phrase or topic you want to rank for throughout the content of your website. This usually results in a website that is of low quality or is useless to people looking for actual relevant information. Search engines are designed to recognize keyword stuffing, and it provides no value to users. Needless to say, there is only so much you can do with keywords, as they are not the only thing search engines look for to rank pages highly.
Blog Comment Spam
One of the oldest black hat SEO techniques is adding links to your site in the comments section of other people's blogs as another way to create backlinks to your content. This technique is so well-known that most websites will mark your comment as spam and ban you. Additionally, using this technique can make your brand look amateurish or dishonest to users who see you spamming links in the comments.