If you own a website, you’ve probably heard about Search Engine Optimization by now. SEO is an advanced digital marketing technique that helps businesses enhance their online reach. It boosts site rankings on Google, allowing more people to discover your distinct brand. There are two types of SEO techniques: White-Hat and Black-hat SEO. The former refers to a proper and approved way of indexing your webpages. Black-hat SEO, on the other hand, is a manipulative practice utilized by malicious people in an attempt to boost their search engine ranking.
This technique is widely referred to as SEO spam or spamdexing. When selecting an SEO company, it’s important to avoid firms that practice black-hat SEO. Instinct Marketing is a white hat Sacramento SEO company that you can depend on.
Here are the 4 key characteristics of SEO spam:
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Excessive link building
One crucial aspect of black-hat SEO is overlinking. This is simply the process of creating an assortment of hyperlinks in external sites that direct users to your website. When done in moderation, link building can improve your SEO ranking organically. But when an SEO professional establish inbound links excessively with minimum effort, this process turns to black-hat link building. The purpose of overlinking is to malevolently outrank other respectable websites and possibly throw them out of business. This prompted the creation of Penguin Algorithm that’s designed to curb black-hat link building by prioritizing the quality of a website’s links rather than its quantity.
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Keyword stuffing
This is yet another notorious black-hat technique used by devious SEO professionals. Normally, keywords are utilized in White-hat SEO to improve website ranking. However, there’s a right way of using keywords – they should be moderated and distributed equally throughout your webpages. In addition, keywords should appear naturally within any article. Keyword stuffing, according to Google, refers to repeating words and phrases so frequently within a web article that the entire content sounds unnatural. It’s an unmistakable culprit that ought to be nipped in the bud.
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Spamming the blog comment section
You’ve probably come across people who insert hyperlinks in numerous blog comment segments. It’s a notorious black-hat technique that’s used to direct readers to a different site. Gladly, Google discovered this sneaky practice and consequently restructured their algorithm to discredit all links that are placed within the comment section. Spamming other people’s websites with hyperlinks is a straight no-no that should be avoided at all costs. Some people use spam bots to flood external sites with links in the comments section. Others hire unscrupulous SEO experts to perform this spamming. Luckily, you can utilize the CAPTCHA tool to filter out spam remarks. This tool is offered by Google for free.
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Cloaking
This common black-hat technique reveals one content piece to readers and shows an entirely dissimilar content piece to Google and other search engines. Some SEO experts use cloaking to improve their site’s ranking while remaining invisible to search engines. It’s wrong to alter the content of your website just to attract more visitors to your site. But what’s unacceptable is deliberately misleading search engine bots into believing that your spammy content is relevant and helpful to browsers.
These pointers will help you spot SEO spam quickly.