Black hat search engine optimisation (SEO) refers to any technique used to increase a website’s visibility in search engine results pages (SERPs) that goes against the TOS of the relevant search engine. While Black Hat SEO techniques may boost a website’s visibility in the short term, they also carry the danger of getting it permanently removed from search results.

The term “Black Hat” comes from classic Westerns, in which the villains wore black hats and the heroes wore white. “Black Hat” SEO methods are those that increase your ranks but provide no real benefit to the user. Black hat search engine optimisation techniques may increase traffic temporarily, but the long-term consequences of utilising them could be disastrous for your business. You don’t want to risk getting completely eliminated from search results if you rely on search to bring in business.

Although cloaking and hidden text are two examples of popular Black Hat SEO techniques, the topic at hand is link building.

How Does SEO Link Building Work?

It’s important to get a handle on the positive (White Hat) before delving into the evil (Black Hat). Some people refer to the practise of negotiating with bloggers, editors, webmasters, and publishers to add a link back to your site as “earning links,” although the recommended method is white hat link building.

Although Google can’t catch every instance of Black Hat link building, by engaging in these methods you are putting your site at risk. If you’re concerned that some of your marketing strategies might violate Google’s or Bing’s webmaster standards, you can function as your own self-policing. But to help you out, here are several methods of link building that could trigger a red alert.

Acquiring Links

Since generating natural connections takes time and effort, it’s tempting to adopt a Black Hat technique like purchasing links to improve your SEO rankings in the short-term. One of the Google webmaster standards we mentioned to above is directly violated.

“Exchanging money for links or posts containing links; exchanging goods or services for links; or sending someone a “free” product in exchange for them writing about your website and including a link to your website is all considered buying or selling links that pass PageRank.”

Recently, numerous websites have been banned for featuring product reviews. While this method was once employed as a standard public relations tactic, many websites began abusing the system for search engine optimisation (SEO) gains, prompting Google to issue a straight statement saying that you cannot trade money or goods for a following link that will help your site. If you’re interested in learning more about this guideline and how it affects websites, check out this blog post about the risks of link building via product reviews.

Google would prefer that businesses get high ranks organically, rather than by paying for links that serve no purpose other than to raise their search engine results page position. However, they aren’t policing for kicks; Google cares about the user experience since it keeps consumers from switching to another search engine.

Using a Loophole in the Site’s Security to Insert Spam Links

Similar to the practise of buying links on Black Hat sites, this tactic includes making use of another website without permission. You would seek for a security flaw on another site and use it to your advantage. This is an extremely simple example of Black Hat SEO. Moreover, if you get detected, all your hard work and rankings will disappear overnight because Google is always monitoring for such practises.

Using Closed-Loop Blog Systems

In this strategy, you’ll set up a number of inconspicuous personal blogs with the sole purpose of directing traffic to your main site. You can increase the popularity of your most important pages by linking back to them. Creating the content for the sites and getting them registered is a significant time commitment. It’s probably not worth the trouble, even if you don’t get flagged for this strategy.

Duplicate Material Use

Using duplicate material is a common Black Hat technique that will almost certainly result in your site being banned. Instead, adopt the White Hat practise of finding new uses for old content.

Indirect Linking

Other methods, known as “Grey Hat” strategies, operate in a morally ambiguous space. They are currently acceptable, but they may be blacklisted in the future by Google.

This includes supporting activities only for the purpose of acquiring inbound connections. Google would rather have you request a “no follow” when you sponsor an event and they connect to your site. Submitting to directories is usually safe, unless you go crazy and sign up for hundreds. Widget linking is getting closer and closer to being completely Black Hat, but if you use them sparingly you can still get away with it.
While inbound links from blog posts and website footers are OK, they won’t generate many visitors. The upside to blog commenting is that if you leave enough comments, the author may recognise your name and you may be able to use this familiarity to your advantage. In the case of footer links, the flow is in the other way. There is a penalty zone if you use too many.