An Introduction to Black Hat SEO

Appearing in search results is vital for business growth, but there’s a right and wrong way of doing search engine optimization. The dark art of black hat SEO is the wrong way. Black hat SEO seeks to game search engine algorithms, rather than solve for the user. Instead of earning the right to rank highly on search engine results pages black hat SEO uses shady tactics to get you there. Sustained use of black hat SEO techniques is likely to damage your presence in search engines rather than improve it.

If you are new to the search space, the purpose of search engines like Google is to provide the best results when someone completes a search. They want people to have a great search experience and ensure the results they provide do not include spam. They do this automatically through algorithms or manual actions that aim to recognize and penalize those engaging in black hat SEO.

Search engine algorithms have gotten more sophisticated over time, which is why you should avoid black hat SEO at all costs. White hat SEO is a much better method of doing search engine optimization. It’s a more ethical approach that abides by the terms and guidelines set out by search engines. White hat SEO consists of creating quality content and a better overall user experience for people visiting your site.

本文将解释什么黑色帽子SEO技术涉及哪些技术，因此您可以在制定有机搜索策略时确保避免它们。

SEO中的黑帽技术

关键字填充

Keyword stuffing refers to the practice of filling your content with irrelevant keywords in an attempt to manipulate where the page ranks on search results pages. Adding multiple variations of keywords where they add no value creates a bad experience for users. It may also cause your page to rank for irrelevant queries.

谷歌解释关键字填充为：

• 没有实质性附加值的电话号码列表。
• 文本列表城市和状态的块正在尝试对
• Repeating the same words or phrases so often that it sounds unnatural.

Here’s an example of keyword stuffing for a website selling outbound marketing software:

“We are in the business of sellingoutbound marketingbob电竞官方下载软件。Outbound marketing softwareis what we sell. If you are thinking of getting出站营销软件bob电竞官方下载get in touch with one of our出站营销软件bob电竞官方下载consultants.”

I think you’ll agree, that sounds like a broken record. It’s pretty easy to spot and Google will be able to tell that the content sounds unnatural.

您可能已经听到了这个笑话：“一名SEO撰稿人走进酒吧，烧烤，酒吧，公共房屋，爱尔兰人，调酒师，饮料，啤酒，葡萄酒，酒……”。这个笑话是关于关键字填充的，这是实践的另一个完美例子。这些单词彼此相似，但是它们没有任何价值，因为它们甚至没有串起句子。

You can do keyword research to find out what people are searching for but overusing these keywords in your content is not a good idea. Rather than filling your content with irrelevant keywords, concentrate on creating usefulcontent t帽子专注于关键字的主题。

Cloaking

Cloaking involves showing one piece of content to users and a different piece of content to search engines. Websites practicing black hat SEO will do this in order to make content rank for a variety of terms irrelevant to their content. Spam websites will often do this to try and avoid a search engine bot finding out the spam content they serve to users.

将您的内容量身定制到不同的用户组是可以接受的。例如，当有人从移动设备访问时，您可能会收缩网站的大小。您可能还会根据某人访问的国家来更改页面的语言。像《福布斯》（Forbes或Inc）这样的发布者可能会更改页面上出现的广告以资助其内容。这些示例是完全可以接受的。只要您不仅更改搜索引擎爬网的内容。

While there is no hard and fast rule to determine what's acceptable and what’s not, my best advice is to ask yourself, does what you intend to do solve for the user? If it does, then it’s acceptable. You should treat search engine bots that crawl your site the same as any other user.

如果您很想知道Google如何看待您的网站，则可以使用该网站fetch as Google tool并将其与用户看到的内容进行比较。

偷偷摸摸的重定向

重定向涉及将某人发送到与最初单击的URL不同的URL。Black Hat SEO使用其预期目的之外的重定向。按照与掩饰相同的行，这可能包括将搜索引擎爬网和所有其他用户重定向到另一页。

Another example is redirecting a highly authoritative page with lots of backlinks into another irrelevant page, just to boost its position in search results. A 301 redirect passes the majority of authority from one page to another. This means someone practicing black hat SEO could use redirects solely for the purpose of manipulating search results.

Redirects should only be used for the purpose they were designed. This might be in the event you change website domain or consolidate two pieces of content. It’s also acceptable to use JavaScript to redirect users on some occasions. Take for example, LinkedIn redirecting you to someone's full profile when you are logged in, rather than show you the public version of a users profile when you are logged out. Sneaky redirects, on the other hand, should be avoided. They violate the guidelines of search engines such as Google and Yandex.

Poor Quality Content

Poor quality content that’s of no value to the searcher is also a common practice in black hat SEO. This includes content scraped from another website either by a bot or a person. At one point search engines like Google weren’t good at recognizing content that had been copied from other websites. The谷歌Panda update在2011年解决这个问题。许多网站duplicate content took an instant hit in search rankings. Since then, Google has gotten much better at recognizing duplicate and low-quality content.

在内容中添加不可见的关键字也是一种禁止的做法。一些参与黑色帽子SEO的网站通过使文本与页面背景相同的颜色来做到这一点。这意味着该页面可能会出现在这些无形关键字的搜索结果中，即使页面上没有有关它们的可见内容。当用户单击结果以为将要搜索的主题时，他们找不到任何内容，因为关键字是看不见的。如果您要为用户求解，则无需在您的网站上隐藏内容。

The “bait and switch” is another black hat means of misleading search engines. This involves creating content surrounding a topic you want to rank for. Once the page is ranking in results for this topic, the content is swapped out for something else. This creates a negative experience for searchers as the content they click-through to see no longer exists. These practices trick users and search engines and they are not a good way to do SEO.

Writing original, quality content is an important part of white hat SEO. Not only is it required to avoid a penalty from search engines, it will also set your website apart. Creating high-quality content builds trust with your target audience and turns visitors into customers.

Paid Links

像Google这样的搜索引擎严格禁止购买和销售链接。他们state on their websitethat “any links intended to manipulatePageRankor a site's ranking in Google search results may be considered part of a link scheme and a violation of Google’s网站管理指南。” This includes sending a website free products in exchange for links. If you’re not sure of what’s an acceptable exchange,马特·卡特（Matt Cutts），Google WebSPAM团队的前负责人建议查看FTC guidelines.

您应该避免支付任何其他网站以链接到您的内容。Google要求用户告诉他们有关people buying or selling links.他们声明，一旦检测到练习，他们将对链接的买卖双方进行惩罚。

If you’re reading this having purchased links without realizing this is a black hat SEO tactic, you should have them removed as soon as possible. You can also use the拒绝链接工具如果您无法让网站管理员删除链接。这告诉Google在计算Pagerank时无视付费链接。

滥用结构化数据/丰富的摘要

Structured data is also known as rich snippets and schema. It allows you to change how your content is displayed on search engine results pages. It makes your content stand out from competitors and also gives you more real estate on results pages. You can add structured data to a page displaying a podcast, recipe, book among other products and services. Reviews schema markup is probably one of the most popular types of structured data.

Black Hat SEO涉及在结构化数据中提供不准确的信息来欺骗搜索引擎和用户。例如，练习Blackhat SEO的人可能会从假评论网站中授予自己的五颗星，并添加结构化数据，以便他们在搜索结果页面上脱颖而出。这是一种非常冒险的做法，因为诸如Google之类的搜索引擎encourage users to report websites misusing structured data。

This should not put you off marking up truthful, accurate information on your web pages. In fact, I highly recommend adding structured data the white hat way. We added review markup to HubSpot product pages and saw a 10% increase in clicks to those pages.

如果您提供对用户有帮助的真实信息，那么您无需担心。Google已记录了rules around adding structured datato your website and also have a helpful测试结构化数据的工具。

Blog Comment Spam

顾名思义，这种黑帽技术涉及在博客评论中包含指向您网站的链接。如今，这种做法的发生较少，因为搜索引擎像谷歌updated their algorithm在博客评论中打折任何链接。默认情况下，大多数权威博客现在在博客评论中链接。这意味着像Google这样的搜索引擎不遵循链接，也不会通过链接传递任何权限。

Despite the decline in the number of people engaging in the practice, you’ll still find a bunch of people onFiverr advertising blog commenting services。博客评论，链接到您的网站是获取指向您网站的链接的一种垃圾方式，我们强烈建议您避免练习。

If you own a publication, forum or community that allows comments you need to take care to ensure that your comments section can’t be spammed by either bots or people. Search engines like Google will demote or completely remove pages containing spam from the search results. Using anti-spam tools like谷歌’s free reCAPTCHA toolis one way to mitigate the risk of spam user generated content.

Link Farms

链接农场是仅出于链接构建目的而开发的网站的网站或集合。每个网站链接到他们想要在搜索引擎上排名更高的网站。搜索引擎通过查看指向网站的链接的数量以及其他因素来对网站进行排名。Black Hat SEO通过使用链接农场来夸大特定网站具有的反向链接数量来利用这一点。

Link farms often have low-quality content and lots of links. The links normally contain the keyword they want the site to rank for in the anchor text. Search engines like Google can easily detect link farms and using them should be avoided. Instead, you should use white hat SEO tactics like creating amazing content, graphs, data, interviews or any other content that allows you to acquire backlinks naturally over time.

私人博客网络

A private blog network (PBN) is a bunch of authoritative websites used solely for link building. They are similar to link farms in that they both aim to exaggerate the number of links pointing to a website. Each PBN site links to the site they want to boost in the search results but do not link to each other.

Black Hat SEOs wanting to build a private network will normally buy expired domains that have already built up authority. They’ll write content similar to what already existed on the domain before it expired and add links to their own site. They hope that search engines won’t notice they’re controlling a network of websites and rank their main website mucher higher in the search results.

搜索引擎已经聪明地发现PBN，如果您使用PBN来改善搜索状态，则可能会受到严重罚款。而不是努力旋转假网站，专注于在您自己的域下创建高质量的内容。将您的内容保持在一个屋顶之下意味着您的网站将是高度权威的，因为每个人都将链接到一个域。

Examples of Black Hat SEO

Groupon’s Bait and Switch

Groupon was accused of doing a bait and switchby旧金山综合旅行。The tour company ran a one of promotion with Groupon but the voucher website continued to advertise the promotion on Google long after it had ended. When searchers clicked on Groupon’s page there was no discount to be found as the content had been swapped out. This bait and switch happened in a PPC advertisement but they often happen on organic results too.

J.C. Penney’s Black Hat Links

J.C. Penney在搜索结果的顶部排名从“紧身牛仔裤”到“家居装饰”的大量关键字。该零售商在搜索结果中的出色表现在假期期间得出了完美的时机。这种出色的搜索结果表现归功于Black Hat SEO链接构建技术在Google的雷达下滑行。

刚刚发现了超过2,000个反向链接道格·皮尔斯（Doug Pierce）。这些链接包含带有非常关键字的锚文本J.C. Penney希望在搜索引擎上排名。许多链接都在与J.C. Penney无关的网站上找到。这些网站的主题从赌场到汽车不等。J.C. Penney对在《纽约时报》采访。

谷歌confirmed the actions of J.C. Penney went against their webmaster guidelines and revealed that they also had violated webmaster guidelines on three previous occasions. J.C. Penney received a Google penalty that saw them drop down close to seventy positions on Google for terms such as “living room furniture.”

Sprint的用户生成的垃圾邮件

In 2013 a user calledRedleg x3 posted on Google’s Webmaster Centralforum explaining Sprint got a notification from Google warning of user-generated spam on their website. Google’s Matt Cutts commented on the thread saying he could see the majority of spam had been removed from the website. He explained the company should “...try to catch the spam a little faster or see if there are some ways to make it a bit harder for the spammers to post a large amount of messages on the community pages.”

Forbes Selling Links

似乎是来自福布斯的人谷歌Webmaster Central forumseeking help with a link violation notice. The notice asked Forbes to remove unnatural links from their site’s content.

Google的Matt Cutts在该线程中评论说，他已经多次确认通过Pagerank的链接。Cutts建议福布斯删除通过Pagerank的付费链接，以撤销罚款。TechCrunch reportedthat Forbes began to remove the paid links back in 2011 after receiving the penalty.

谷歌Chrome’s Paid Link

甚至Google不时弄乱了自己的SEO。On one occasion他们在有关Google Chrome的赞助帖子中包括了关注链接。这是Black Hat SEO之下的，因为该链接被包括在公司支付的赞助内容的一部分中。bob全站appGoogle WebSPAM团队对www.google.com/chrome，减少Pagerank六十天。针对Google Chrome的黑标记使他们在“浏览器”一词的搜索结果上脱颖而出。

为什么要避免黑帽子SEO

While black hat SEO is not illegal, it does violate webmaster guidelines set out by search engines. In other words, it’s still against the rules. This means if you engage in black hat SEO, you must be willing to get hit with a nasty penalty as punishment. Getting a penalty from search engines will cause your website to drop down in the search results or worse, it could be removed completely. This means your website will gain less traffic and ultimately, fewer customers.

Search engines have gotten better and better at spotting black hat SEO techniques. Nowadays getting caught for practicing black hat SEO is pretty much unavoidable. Black hat SEO does not solve for the searcher nor does it solve for the search engine. While you may see short-term gains from black hat SEO over time search engines will pick up on your black hat ways damaging your presence in search.

The Blurred Lines of Grey Hat SEO

You won’t find grey hat SEO in the middle of a Robin Thicke song, but you will find it somewhere in the middle of black and white hat SEO. If there’s an SEO tactic you find hard to categorize as black or white hat SEO, then it’s probably a grey hat technique.

灰色帽子SEO线靠近Black Hat SEO系列。灰帽子的策略通常在网站管理指南中没有列为禁止的做法，但它们有些可疑。一旦发现了有关它们的搜索引擎，许多灰顶练习已成为黑色帽子的实践。

如何避免黑帽SEO

There’s no doubt black hat SEO is a risky business that’s not worth engaging in. Here are best practices to avoid black hat SEO:

• 以相同的方式处理搜索者并搜索引擎。通过将它们重定向到另一页来避免“掩饰”或欺骗搜索引擎爬网。您应该始终将精力集中在为搜索者方面的解决方案，并从搜索引擎到网站创造出色的用户体验。
• Write only good quality original content that avoids keyword stuffing. Never scrape, duplicate or reword content that belongs to others. Google’s内容指南还有我们的content creation kitmay be helpful.
• Abide by therules when adding structured datato your website. Ensure any schema markup you add is accurate and not misleading to users.
• 切勿购买或出售链接并记住，不仅是金钱被认为是黑帽交换。还禁止提供免费产品以换取链接。如果您不确定交换是否可能是不道德的FTC endorsement guidelinesand consult thisdetailed blog post about paid links从谷歌。
• 避免建立专用博客网络以获取链接。区分您的网站和内容，以便人们自然地链接到您，而不是伪造它，直到您制作它为止。那永远不会结束。
• Stay up to date on webmaster guidelines so you can avoid black hat tactics prohibited by search engines. Here are the webmaster guidelines for谷歌,YahooandYandex.

不要进行下一个搜索“我如何摆脱Google的罚款？”如果您需要质疑某物是否是黑帽子，那可能是。白帽SEO策略是搜索引擎优化的更好方法。从长远来看，它将支付股息，您可以在晚上睡觉，因为由于罚款令人讨厌，因此您永远不会看到排名的下降。因此，对于搜索引擎的热爱，永远不要做黑色帽子SEO。毕竟，他们是使我们在业务中保持SEO的人。