If you have been working with an outside contractor to handle your search engine optimization, you’re going to want to be on the lookout for Black hat SEO practices. These unethical practices will help your website rank higher in google temporarily, in the long run however you will be penalized and your site may even be removed from the search engine. Understanding how you can identify these techniques will help you stay safe and keep your page up. Here are 4 signs to watch for:
Paying for links:
Having a high authority backlink can be powerful. Having too many links on a page with many other paid links can be rough for your page. If you find a website that has hundreds or even thousands of links going through to other sites or blogs, there is a good chance it’s a paid link site.
Stuffing keywords:
Keyword stuffing is another technique that can help you rank for certain keywords in your niche quickly. The ratio of keywords in a piece of content will give you a good idea if keyword stuffing has occurred. Using Yoast or another addon can help you quickly check on keyword ratios. If the ratio is far above 20% or more, you have been a victim of stuffing keywords.
Hidden linking:
Placing text behind an image, using off screen links, using 0 font size links, linking small text in content or links that blend into background colors are all outlawed under Google standards. This still remains a popular black cat strategy though.
Private blog network:
Paid views or a private network where content creators regularly visit the page from the same IP address, comment on content, click advertisements under agreement and more are in direct violation of google standard. This still remains a popular strategy for bumping content up search engines quickly and boosting pages. Keep an eye out for the same IP address is regularly visiting the page or identical comments on your content.
Keep these top signs in mind with your own page to prevent the chance you could be accused of black hat strategies.
This post was written by Kristian D’An. Kristian is the owner and SEO Specialist at Lux Digital Marketing, a St Pete SEO company. Kristian has been optimizing websites successfully for over 7 years. He has helped his clients achieve the #1 position on Google in several different industries.
