Black Hat SEO Techniques

Black Hat SEO Techniques

As black hat SEO continues to decline many people may be wondering does black hat SEO still work in 2016? 

The quick answer is definitely YES. Yes my friend.

Black hat SEO does certainly still work in 2016. I can also safety predict that black hat SEO will still work in 2017, 2018 and beyond.

There is a simple fact of computer algorithm. As long as Google operates on a computer algorithm people will figure out how to trick that algorithm.

While search engines like Google have made it more difficult to game their algorithm black hat methods do still work and certain black hat SEO methods will not be going anywhere for a long time.

Let’s get into a little more detail about what black hat SEO methods still work.

1. Private Blog Networks

Almost since the beginning, Google has used inbound links as a ranking factor for websites. At first it was rather simple. Every link to your website, was considered a “Vote” by Google. The more inbound links you had the more likely you would rank well in search results. Google would also use the anchor text in those links to determine what you should rank for in terms of specific searches. 

For example, if you had 150 links pointing to your site with the word “Weight Loss”, but a competitor of yours had 1,000 links containing the same text chances are your competitor would rank above you.

These days it’s not so simple. The Google Penguin update changed everything in terms of links as a ranking factor. Instead of the quantity of links being a ranking factor Google has moved much more strongly towards quality. Having a lot of low quality links, can actually harm your site in search engines. So, If your competitor has 1,000 spammy links with the term “Weight Loss”, but you have 2 links with “weight loss” it might seem like your competitor will rank higher. However, let’s say your links are on the homepage of two high profile government or educational sites. Chances are you would rank higher.

2. Negative SEO Practices

Negative S.E.O is probably, the worst form of black hat SEO. It is extremely unethical, but unfortunately it does work. The premise of negative SEO isn’t to prop up your own site but to destroy your competitors rankings. Essentially if you wanted to use negative SEO you would start purchasing lots of spammy links by the thousands and pointing them to your competitor. Eventually Google will pick up on these spammy links and penalize your competitor for unnatural links to their site. It is relatively inexpensive to do this and the results can be crippling.

3. Content Scrapers And Stolen Content

Some of the more technically savvy black hat SEOers use content scrapers to steal your content and post it on their own sites. For the most part this is rather harmless. However sometimes it can pose an issue. If you post content and immediately it gets stolen and posted on another site Google may crawl the other site first and think you are actually the one who stole the content thus crushing any chance for that article to rank highly in search results. If this happens to you it is important to file complaints with Google and also file a DCMA complaint.

4. Hacking

Websites are hacked all the time. In fact a few of my sites have been hacked in the past and it’s a mess. Sometimes the hacking is obvious because your site will be taken completely down or infected with so much malware that virus scan software will alert you to the threat immediately. Other times the hacking can be much more subtle. For example, someone could hack into your site for the sole purpose of secretly placing a link back to their site on a high ranking page. They could also insert code into a specific page or even site wide to block search engines spiders from crawling your site properly. Once a hacker gets into the backend of your site quite a bit of damage could be caused.

Conclusion.

Yes, black hat SEO will still work in 2016. Many of the black hat SEO methods that will work best are methods me and you can’t even think of They are methods that smart individuals will come up with but unfortunately their smarts are being used in a bad way. Even if you do find a black hat SEO method that works well for you in 2016 you are not actually building a real and sustainable business. Eventually, the house of cards will come crashing down and you’ll be left with nothing.

Heck, maybe I’m wrong? Maybe you’ll find a black hat SEO method works wonders not only in 2016, but for many more years to come. In that case you are one of the lucky few. But do you really want to take that chance? Do you really want to be one of the “fortunate” black hat SEOers that succeeds when you can also succeed by doing things ethically?

The decission is ultimately yours, but I strongly urge anyone who is considering using black hat SEO strategies in 2016 to simply do what you know is right. 

Build a real business in a real legitimate way. You might be surprised at how well it actually works.

That's all about todays discussion. Hope, enjoyed it. 

Stay Healthy. Be always happy.