Black Hat are mainly actions that can be applied on a website in order to improve its ranking. These practices are considered misleading by Google and go in the opposite direction to the recommendations given by the company and the best SEO practices. It is important to point out that Black Hat techniques can cause an immediate increase in traffic, but they are not efficient in the long run.
This is because they are manipulating the rules of the search engines and, therefore, they can result in great punishments to the practicing sites. We know that Google prioritizes more and more the ones that offer quality content and a good user experience, and it is precisely in this path that good SEO practices follow. Black Hat, by contrast, has the only purpose of reaching the top of search results, regardless of the cost of doing so.
Black hat: why not to do it?
– User experience
The first reason for not practicing Black Hat is that this technique is mainly focused on search engines, regardless of the user experience. It is common to find on websites that use these techniques with exaggerated repetitions of keywords and without logical reasoning. These pages are structured exclusively for positioning. This means that, even if the website eventually gets more traffic, when someone accesses it and finds content that resembles spam, they will probably abandon it. In technical terms, the bounce rate of the site tends to increase considerably. But in addition, you could lose potential customers.
– Lack of ethics
The second reason is that Black Hat practices are unfair to competitors. It is true that when it comes to competition, there is a desire to stand out. However, nothing better than beating your competitor by offering more quality than him/her, right? And still doing everything fairly, according to Google rules. As the search engine itself says in its Webmaster Guidelines, a good parameter is to think if you would feel comfortable justifying your actions to one of your competitors.
-There are penalties
Finally, the third reason for not practicing Black Hat is that with each new update, Google’s algorithm acts more effectively to identify manipulation practices. Sites that use Black Hat techniques are not only identified, they are also punished. As much as these practices may even generate immediate results, in a short time the website may be penalized, suffering negative consequences in its performance. Otherwise, when performing SEO optimizations, which go according to Google’s guidelines, your website gains credibility and guarantees stable and long-lasting results.
How does Google penalize sites with Black Hat practices?
Google can penalize a website in different ways. These punishments vary according to the severity of the action taken, that is, according to the number of irregularities and the impact of each one of them on the website’s performance. Once this severity is defined, Google will apply a manual action on the site.
Penalties can vary between:
* Reduced Page Rank;
* Sudden loss of positioning and, as a result, a drop in organic traffic;
* Difficulty indexing and positioning new pages on the site;
* Complete removal of the site from the Google index and partner sites.
Therefore, if you are looking to build a successful business that generates results for a long time, it is essential to invest in quality SEO work.