It is dangerous that the SEO measures taken on the website that you operate are unintentionally in violation of Google’s guidelines and subject to penalties.
However, search engine algorithms are evolving every day, so SEO techniques that were once popular can now lead to penalties.
In this article, we will introduce black hat SEO, which was once mainstream but declined due to violations of guidelines, and white hat SEO, which is now mainstream.
The difference between the two and the effective methods for current SEO measures are summarized in an easy-to-understand manner, so please refer to it.
What is Black Hat SEO?
Black hat SEO is a method that goes against the guidelines set by Google and aims for high-ranking display in a non-orthodox way .
In the first place, there are two major SEO measures to make your website appear higher in search engines. One is black hat SEO and the other is white hat SEO .
There are various items in Google’s guidelines , but basically it is urged to create a website with search users (website viewers) first.
Black hat SEO refers to the creation of a low-quality website that ignores the user-friendliness and usefulness of Google’s search algorithm and aims to be displayed at the top of the search results.
However, with the evolution of search engines, the methods used in black hat SEO have become ineffective, and in severe cases, they are now subject to penalties.
What is the difference between Black Hat SEO and White Hat SEO?
| black hat SEO | white hat SEO | |
|---|---|---|
| Purpose | I want to be able to enjoy high ranking without spending time and money as much as possible | I want to make a good website for users and display it at the top |
| Compliance with guidelines | How to circumvent guidelines | Techniques for complying with guidelines |
| User convenience | Low/None | high |
| content quality | bad | high |
| Penalty risk | be | do not have |
Why black hat SEO became popular
In the first place, why did black hat SEO with fear of penalty become popular?
The background is that Google’s algorithm around 2000-2010 was full of loopholes.
The Google algorithm at that time was a simple mechanism unlike today, so it was possible to display it at the top with a trick.
It was very attractive to both those who teach and learn how to make money from blogging, so the number of imitative sites increased.
As a result, black hat SEO, which can easily be displayed at the top, has become a major method, such as “just insert a lot of keywords” and “get a backlink to easily increase your ranking”.
Since black hat SEO methods were widely publicized on social media, many website creators did not even recognize that it was bad at the time.
Read Also: Do You Need a Table of Contents for Your WordPress Blog?
Is Black Hat SEO Still Effective?
In the past, black hat SEOs looking for loopholes and Google’s search engine trying to prevent them have played a cat-and-mouse game.
However, since Google’s search engine has been updated and evolved over time, black hat SEO is no longer effective these days .
There are two major updates to Google’s search engine: the Penguin Update and the Panda Update.
“Penguin Update” was an update that was divided into several times from April 2012, and was the content of illegally acquiring backlinks and cracking down on hidden text.
The “Panda Update” was an update that started in July 2012 (February 2011 in the English-speaking world) and penalized low-quality content and websites.
Google makes these updates more or less regularly, constantly improving its search algorithms.
List of typical black hat SEO techniques
Due to the improvement of Google’s search engine, black hat SEO is now almost unheard of, but what kind of technique was it specifically?
In this chapter, we will introduce the typical black hat SEO techniques that actually existed.
Word Salad (auto-generated content)
Word salad refers to text content that is grammatically correct but has broken meaning when viewed as sentences .
Taking advantage of the fact that [a website with a large amount of content created by inserting many keywords] was highly evaluated on Google, I decided to use a program instead of a human to enter the keywords according to the grammar. was to be automatically generated.
for example…
- Today’s lunch was tennis, and it was very far.
- We have formed about 45 minutes to talk about eating sweets from female entrepreneurs while serving as a support organization.
Create a website (1) by automatically generating such incoherent sentences.
WEB site ① created using Word Salad uses a lot of keywords and is a voluminous website, so it will be highly evaluated by Google.
On top of that, send a backlink from website ① to another website ② that you want to be displayed higher. Then, the website ② introduced by the highly rated website ① will also be rated higher, and the ranking will rise.
However, in the first place, website ① is a site that consists of content that is broken as sentences, so it is considered a low-quality website by the current Google algorithm.
As a result, the website where you can see the word salad and the website that has acquired backlinks from it will also be subject to penalty, so you should never do it.
For more information, see the Google Guidelines for Automatically Generated Content .
copy content
Copy content refers to content created by copying or imitating other web pages .
When creating a large amount of content, it is easy to copy other web pages and create them.
As expected, full-text copies would be caught as duplicate content, so there were methods of correcting only small parts such as endings and small words, and methods of extracting and connecting the necessary text from multiple web pages.
If only websites with similar content are displayed, it cannot be said to be beneficial for search users.
Modern search engines have updated their ability to find duplicate content, so web pages found with duplicate content are now penalized.
In addition to other web pages, creating multiple content with similar content on your own website may also be regarded as copied content, so be careful.
Keyword abuse
It is also known as “keyword stuffing”, and it is a method of stuffing keywords into the content.
In the past, content with a lot of keywords was rated as highly relevant to users’ search needs and was displayed at the top.
“Keyword stuffing” is a technique that abuses this algorithm and stuffs keywords all the time.
However, overuse of keywords makes it difficult for search users to read the text or understand the entire sentence, which reduces usability.
It is important to include keywords in your content, but it is more important to keep an appropriate amount and create content that is easy to read and useful for users.
Link purchase (paid drink)
A paid link is a method of paying money to receive a backlink .
In SEO measures, receiving backlinks from other websites is regarded as “a website of good quality enough to be introduced” and is highly evaluated by Google.
The SEO effect of backlinks is still effective today, but the algorithm at the time simply evaluated a site that received a lot of backlinks as being of good quality.
There were many sites that used that algorithm, paid to get a lot of backlinks, and behaved like a good website.
Currently, not only is it meaningless to receive unnatural backlinks and backlinks from low-quality websites, but sites that are thought to have acquired backlinks and intentionally manipulated search rankings are penalized. Be careful as you will receive
Links from satellite sites
This is another method for getting backlinks .
A satellite site is a website launched on a different domain than the main site.
If you want your main site to rank higher, create a satellite site with a similar theme. At this time, the relationship between the main site and the satellite site is hidden.
Then, send backlinks from the satellite site to the main site, and show yourself that the main site is a good site.
However, at present, natural backlinks from high-quality websites and websites by experts are considered effective, and backlinks from satellite sites that are created on an ad hoc basis are meaningless.
As with link purchases (paid links), Google’s guidelines for self-performed links from satellite sites are detailed in the ” Link Program ” section of Google’s guidelines.
Hidden links/hidden text
Hidden links/hidden text are, as they say, links and text placed on web pages that are invisible or hard to see from searchers .
Hidden links aim to increase the evaluation of web pages by inserting links into text that is difficult to find, such as text with a smaller font size or . (dot).
Hidden text is stuffed with keywords in the same text color as the background color of the screen, or a large amount of keywords are entered behind the image to be inserted in the article for the purpose of increasing the relevance with the search keyword.
Unlike the abuse of keywords, a natural website can be created that does not make the searcher feel uncomfortable.
For hidden links and hidden text, you can check the details in Google’s guidelines ” Hidden text and hidden links “.
Illegal cloaking
Cloaking is a method of changing the contents displayed depending on the visitor of a web page .
In black hat SEO cloaking, the display content changes depending on whether the visitor is a “search user” or a “search engine”.
This technique can be a little confusing, so I ‘ll use an example from the Google guidelines video on “cloaking” .
Suppose that information about “anime” is displayed when a Google crawler visits a website.
Since the search engine recognizes it as a web page about “anime”, if a user who searches for “anime” discovers and visits the website, information about “anime” should naturally be displayed.
But what if when you actually visit the site, you see “adult content” instead of anime? It confuses searchers and frustrates the search engines that introduced you to the site.
As for cloaking, it has become easier to find with the evolution of search engines, so it is no longer an effective technique.
However, it is possible that the website is hacked and hackers intentionally set up cloaking so that the owner does not know, so be careful.
It is important to create content with white hat SEO in mind
In the previous chapter, we introduced the specific methods of black hat SEO, but since this is a method that violates Google’s guidelines, all of them are currently penalized.
You may be able to enjoy temporary SEO effects and be displayed at the top, but of course there is no future because it will not last long.
At that time, it is important to create content that is conscious of white hat SEO .
Unlike black hat SEO, white hat SEO is closely related to the user’s search intention, and creates websites and content that are useful and convenient.
Google’s ” Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Starter Guide ” also states, “Websites should be built for the convenience of users, and all optimizations should be adjustments to improve the user experience. ” is stated.
First of all, from the perspective of search users, what kind of content is introduced and how will users be satisfied? Let’s create a website and content that is useful for users with the image of
In addition to the ” Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Starter Guide “, Google’s ” Guidelines for Webmasters ” and ” Search Quality Evaluation Guidelines ” can be used as white hat SEO indicators to improve user experience. You can know what you are conscious of for it, so I recommend you to take a look at it once.
summary
In this article, we have introduced black hat SEO and white hat SEO as techniques to improve the ranking of search results.
In recent years, due to the evolution of Google’s search algorithm, high-quality sites are now being evaluated correctly by search users .
Along with that, black hat SEO is subject to penalties and is on the decline.
White hat methods are effective for SEO, but some people may find it difficult to hear algorithms.
In such a case, refer to Google’s guidelines and aim to operate a high-quality website that can increase the satisfaction of search users.