Black Hat SEO Link Exchange Techniques You Should Avoid
There is no doubt that link building is one of the most vital SEO optimization techniques ever. SEO specialists and website owners focus on and depend on link building and link exchange as their main objectives, as they help them achieve the intended outcome. However, as everything in life is black and white, so are SEO techniques. Recently, a few devious SEO techniques emerged and circulated like wildfire. People started using such techniques, claiming that their results were more effective and speedy. Although this is somewhat true, they sometimes improved their ranking quickly, but they also had terrible consequences. In this article, we will demonstrate black-hat link exchange and building SEO techniques, and why you should completely avoid them.
What is Black Hat SEO
In movies, the villains and devious characters always had a certain look and aura. He is always wearing black. Also, sometimes wears a black fedora, and has this smirk like he knows something you don’t and is always hiding. Well, you can imagine black-hat SEO as this person, the one with the black fedora. Black-hat SEO is the process of employing illegitimate and unethical tactics to increase a website’s ranking on search engine results pages.
These techniques aim to deceive and trick Google’s algorithms into believing that this website’s metrics are high enough to be on the top pages of the search engine’s results. Websites using black hat SEO techniques usually rank in the top 3 results in a very short time. However, this achievement is momentary, as Google quickly identifies the deceiving scheme and penalizes these websites. If these websites return to using these techniques once again, they usually ban the whole website for spam and illegal behavior.
Link Building and Black Hat SEO: The Dark Side of Link Building
So, what is the connection that brings link building, or exchange and black-hat SEO together? As we mentioned at the very beginning, link building, and exchange are extremely vital for any website. Whatever its purpose and category. The process of link building is a top priority in any SEO plan or strategy. Due to its great significance, people started to merge link-building with black-hat techniques. They thought that it would give them great and quick effects. This merger happened by gathering all the standard link-building strategies and finding points where they could manipulate them into being black-hat techniques.
Common Black Hat Backlinking Techniques to Avoid
To give you a more clear image and a grasp of what black-hat backlinking techniques are, here is the most common black-hat backlinking technique commonly used and penalized by Google.
Low-Quality Guest Posting
One of the most common black-hat backlinking techniques is low-quality guest posting. This involves creating low-quality content and submitting it to websites in exchange for a backlink. These guest posts are often irrelevant to the website’s niche and provide little value to readers. Google has cracked down on this practice and now considers it a violation of its guidelines. Instead, focus on creating high-quality content that is relevant to the website’s niche and provides value to readers. This will not only help you gain backlinks naturally but also improve your website’s reputation and ranking.
Keyword Stuffing
Keyword stuffing is a black-hat backlinking technique. It involves overusing keywords in your content in an attempt to manipulate search engine rankings. This can include adding irrelevant keywords, repeating the same keyword multiple times, or hiding keywords by making them the same color as the background. Not only does this harm your website’s reputation and ranking, but it also creates a poor user experience for your audience. Instead, focus on creating high-quality, valuable content that naturally incorporates relevant keywords. This will not only improve your search engine rankings but also attract and retain a loyal audience.
Cloaking
Yes, cloaking, like the one in Harry Potter. Cloaking is the process of having two separate versions of a page on your website, one for users and one for search engines. The version that appears to users is the one that actually has somewhat good content and information that they would need. On the other hand, the version for search engines only contains the things that spiders and bots recognize and pick up. It contains many relevant keywords, hidden texts, links, etc. This way, the web crawlers, and spiders find all the factors needed to increase the ranking of this website. This technique is, of course, momentarily effective. However, many search engines have updated their algorithms and crawlers to be able to identify such acts and penalize websites that implement them.
Deceiving Redirects
Another black-hat backlinking technique to avoid is deceiving redirects. This involves using a redirect to send users to a different page than the one they clicked on. Often to a page that is irrelevant or spam. This can harm your website’s reputation and ranking, as it is seen as a manipulative tactic. Instead, use redirects sparingly and only when necessary, and make sure they lead to relevant and valuable content for the user.
Link Farms
Link farms are a black-hat SEO link exchange technique that involves creating a network of websites solely for the purpose of linking to each other. This is done in an attempt to manipulate search engine rankings and increase the number of backlinks to a website. However, search engines have become increasingly sophisticated at detecting link farms and will penalize websites that engage in this practice. Instead, focus on building high-quality, natural backlinks through creating valuable content and building relationships with other websites in your industry.
Automated Blog Comments
Automated blog comments are another common black-hat backlinking technique to avoid. This involves using software to automatically post comments on blogs with a link back to your website. These comments are often generic and irrelevant to the blog post and can be seen as spammy by both the blog owner and other readers. Instead, focus on building genuine relationships with other bloggers and leaving thoughtful, relevant comments on their posts. This will not only help build backlinks but also establish you as a credible and valuable member of the blogging community.
How to Identify and Remove Bad Backlinks
During the link exchange and building process, you may encounter and collaborate with a website that employs black-hat SEO techniques. This can result in you having bad-quality backlinks, which can have a very bad impact on your website’s SEO metrics and ranking. So, how can you identify and remove bad backlinks?
You have two opportunities to do so: either before collaborating or after. The first opportunity before starting the link exchange with another website is to research the said websites and keep an eye on the techniques they use on their platform. You can always check their metrics, such as their toxicity score, to decide whether or not it is legitimate or not.
The second opportunity usually occurs after completing the link exchange and building process. This is done by checking your website’s statistics and metrics through any of the great SEO tools like SEMrush or Ahref to identify any low-quality or toxic backlinks that may have been caused by one of the websites that use illegitimate and deceiving techniques. You can then remove them to avoid any penalization by search engines and improve your ranking on SERPs.
Final Thoughts
All aspects of life have their dark and bright sides. However, it is important to keep employing and walking the bright side’s way. The dark side and techniques of SEO link exchange can be great at first. From cloaking to deceiving redirects and many more, they achieve some remarkable outcomes. However, they never last forever. With the guidelines and policies of search engines, it is very risky to implement any of these techniques. As it is now limited to penalties only. To ensure seamless and penalty-free success, you need to be on the less risky side. Techniques like guest posting, link building, and exchange are examples of great ones that also have the same exceptional outcome. But this time, it is not short-term. To make things even easier for you, we have the perfect tool that will make implementing such techniques as easy as pie. LinkExchange.AI is your perfect go-to for finding link exchange and building opportunities. Through this platform, you will find an endless list of websites in various fields looking for relevant websites to collaborate with. All you have to do is sign up now for free and enjoy a 100% guaranteed and trustworthy collaboration with other websites. Join LinkExchange.AI now, and lose the black fedora!
