If you’re building a new site, it’s easy to assume you can just create content, add an insane number of keywords, and even resort to drastic measures like paying for links to start ranking.
Well, you can do all those things. But if you’re not careful, you could end up crossing the thin line to black hat SEO techniques.
What is black hat SEO?
It’s spammy. It’s deceptive. And it exists solely to trick search engines into thinking your site is authoritative and trustworthy—the very definition of creating content for search engines, not for humans.
So, black hat SEO is a bad strategy overall if you’re trying to gain Google’s trust and build authority.
In this article, we’ll cover what it is, why you should avoid it, and warning signs to look out for.
What Is black hat SEO?
Black hat SEO is any search engine optimization strategy that aims to rank a site in the search engine results pages (SERPs) in an unethical, manipulative way.
Here’s an image explaining what black hat SEO is vs white hat SEO (SEO strategy that follows search engine guidelines.
Has someone ever contacted you, offering to pay you for a backlink to their site? Have you visited a webpage full of keywords completely unrelated to the topic?
Those are different forms of black hat SEO.
This tactic is a low-effort way to get rankings and exploit loopholes in search engine algorithms. And it sometimes gets quick results. But long-term, results often don’t last for a few different reasons:
- Search engine algorithm updates: Google frequently releases updates to ensure only the highest quality content ranks in the SERPs. The search engine giant targets techniques like keyword stuffing, cloaking, and spammy backlinks in these updates. So, while these strategies might work temporarily, Google is constantly improving its algorithm to flag and devalue sites that use black hat SEO strategies.
- Severe penalties: If Google catches sites using black hat methods, it can impose fines. This could range from a noticeable drop in rankings to complete removal from the SERPs.
- Lack of trust and authority: Search engines prioritize websites that demonstrate experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness (E-E-A-T). So, if a site engages in manipulative tactics and doesn’t display E-E-A-T, it likely won’t maintain its rankings.
Now that we’ve discussed what black hat SEO is, let’s see why it is bad for your website.
Why is black hat SEO bad for your website?
So, if black hat SEO can get you to the top of the SERPs faster, why shouldn’t you use it?
The first reason is that Google will penalize your site if you unnecessarily stuff keywords, pay for links, use sneaky redirects, or employ other black hat tactics.
So, your rankings will suffer, or worse, your site will not appear in the SERPs.
Black hat SEO is also bad because it negatively affects the user experience (UX). On a black hat SEO site, you’ll often find low-quality content, spammy links that don’t add value, or lots of keywords in one paragraph (keyword stuffing).
So, even if that site manages to appear in the top search results, it will likely experience a high bounce rate because visitors will quickly realize that the content isn’t intended to help them; it’s only intended to manipulate search engine rankings.
While UX isn’t a direct SEO ranking factor, it influences key metrics that search engines use to evaluate your website’s quality, like bounce rate, dwell time, and page engagement.
What are the key warning signs of black hat SEO?
Knowing how to spot black hat SEO tactics on your site is essential. Maybe you recently hired an SEO agency to boost your rankings and want to ensure they didn’t use black hat strategies.
Or, you did everything right. You use white hat SEO to gain organic traffic and links. But you want to be on the safe side by checking if you unknowingly engaged in black hat practices or linked to other sites that have.
Being proactive will help you identify and fix harmful practices that might result in penalties or negatively impact your rankings.
On the other hand, spotting black hat tactics on different sites can also be helpful.
You’ll be able to understand your competition, identify potentially harmful sites you’re linking to, and report sites engaging in black hat practices to maintain a level playing field.
Below are major red flags to look out for.
Link cloaking
Link cloaking occurs when a website shows one thing to search engines but something entirely different for users.
Example: A URL says www.example.com/buy-shoes, but clicking leads to a spammy page selling weight loss pills.
How to spot on your site: Use browser extensions on Redirect Path to analyze link redirects. Check all links in your content to ensure they accurately represent the destination and avoid misleading practices. Review the backend of your content management system (CMS) for cloaking scripts.
How to spot on other sites: Hover over links to see if the destination matches the text or image description. Use a tool like Ahrefs to identify redirected pages.
Keyword stuffing
Adding too many keywords to a page makes it sound unnatural and hard to read.
This may help search engines understand what the page is about, but not in a good way. Search bots will crawl your site, analyze it, and look for patterns like excessive repetition of keywords, unnatural language, and poor sentence structure.
So, keyword stuffing is counterintuitive. It could hurt your rankings instead of helping them.
Example: “Buy cheap shoes, best cheap shoes, shoes for cheap”.
How to spot on your site: Use a keyword density tool like Yoast to analyze the ratio of keywords to total content. Rewrite overly repetitive sections.
How to spot on other sites: Read through a page and see if the same keyword or phrase appears excessively throughout the text. Does it feel forced or awkward? If the keyword doesn’t appear where it makes sense, it’s probably keyword stuffing.
Hidden text or links
Some sites hide texts or links – They do this by making them the same color as the background or placing them off the screen.
This is an attempt to game search engines by hiding irrelevant keywords or links to boost rankings. It leads to a poor UX and violates search engine guidelines.
Example: A page uses white text on a white background to hide a paragraph of unrelated keywords.
How to spot on your site: Use your browser’s developer tools (Inspect Element) to find any invisible text. Search your website’s HTML for tags like display: none; or font-size 0. Review your CSS for styles that may make text or links invisible.
How to spot on other sites: Highlight the entire page to reveal hidden text, such as the same color as the background, tiny font sizes, or links that are invisible unless you highlight the page. Inspect suspicious elements (e.g., tiny dots that may actually be links).
Doorway pages
These pages are made only to rank for specific keywords but then redirect you elsewhere. They waste time and can frustrate users.
The lack of quality on doorway pages can lead to penalties from search engines.
Example: A page optimizes for “cheap flights” but redirects to a payday loan website.
How to spot on your site: Use a crawling tool like Screaming Frog to locate thin or nearly identical pages that redirect visitors elsewhere. Test whether your landing pages deliver the promised content or push users to another unrelated URL.
How to spot on other sites: Click on search results to see if they redirect. Analyze URLs for signs of manipulation, such as automatically triggering downloads.
Duplicate content
Posting the same content on multiple pages can confuse search engines about which page to rank, which can dilute traffic and visibility.
It can also lead to a poor UX because visitors are getting repetitive, redundant information instead of fresh, engaging content.
But this is not to say that all duplicate content is bad. In some cases, you may need to use duplicate content:
- If you have an e-commerce site with product variations.
- If you share your content on other sites and credit the original with a special tag.
- If you create content for different regions with slight changes in language or culture.
- If you want to offer a clean version of your page for people who wish to print it out.
In those cases, the best way to tackle duplicate content is to use:
- Canonical tags: A canonical tag tells Google, “This is the original version of this page.” So, you’d use a canonical tag to show which page you want search engines to rank.
- Noindex tags: A noindex tag tells search engines, “Don’t include this page in your search results.” This is useful when you have duplicate content that you don’t want to include in Google’s index such as thank-you pages after a purchase or printer-friendly versions of a page.
- 301 redirects: A 301 redirect is a permanent redirect from one page to another. It tells users and search engines that you’ve moved the content. You use 301 redirects when you have duplicate pages that shouldn’t exist anymore or when you merge pages. A 301 redirect passes the SEO value from the old page to the new one, so you don’t lose any rankings.
Example: An e-commerce site copies the same product description for every listing with minor tweets.
How to spot on your site: Use Google Search Console to identify duplicate content across your site. Manually search for exact content phrases on Google to see if they appear elsewhere on the web.
How to spot on other sites: Compare pages within the same site to see if the content is the same. Duplicate pages often have low-quality variations of the exact keywords.
Content scraping
Content scraping is copying content from other sites without permission or adding anything unique.
This can hurt your credibility, which can, in turn, affect your rankings. It can also lead to copyright issues.
Example: A blog lifts entire articles from competitors without permission or adding original value.
How to spot on your site: Check for unauthorized duplicates of your content using a plagiarism checker. If your content appears on another site, reach out to request removal or file a DMCA takedown.
How to spot on other sites: Spot copied content by searching for a sentence in quotation marks on Google. A site that replicates content without permission often displays multiple articles across unrelated topics with no original voice.
Private blog networks (PBNs)
Private blog networks are groups of blogs that give fake backlinks to a main site. It might help temporarily, but search engines can figure it out and penalize you.
Example: A site receives backlinks from 10 different blogs, all owned by the same person, with content full of generic text.
How to spot on your site: Analyze your backlink profile to identify patterns, such as many links from the same IP range, domain ownership, or content structure that looks artificially manufactured.
How to spot on other sites: Look for sites that use a similar layout or content structure. You can use tools like Majestic to spot links from ˘similar domains.
Link farms
When you search “What is black hat SEO?” on the web, link farming will be one of the top results. It’s an old trick that search engines can now spot easily.
This is when a bunch of sites link to each other just to boost rankings. However, these links are often low-quality and irrelevant, providing little to no value to users.
Example: A site gets hundreds of backlinks from unrelated blogs, like recipes or gaming forums, within days.
How to spot on your own site: Use a backlink analysis tool. This helps identify low-quality or irrelevant websites linking to your page. Look for suspicious link patterns, such as large numbers of links from unrelated or spammy sites with little to no content.
How to spot on other sites: Look at the backlink profiles of competitors to spot patterns like high-volume links from unrelated sites or those with little to no traffic.
Unnatural link profiles
If your website has too many links from low-quality or unrelated sites, it raises red flags for search engines. They want to see natural, relevant links.
Example: A brand new website gains 5,000 backlinks overnight, most from unrelated foreign domains.
How to spot on your site: Use a backlink audit tool to analyze the quality and relevance of backlinks. Look for big spikes in backlink counts, especially from unrelated or low-authority domains.
How to spot on other sites: Look for websites with links that seem out of place or sudden surges in backlinks.
Paid links
Buying links to manipulate rankings is another sign of black hat SEO. This might seem like a shortcut, but Google is getting better and better at identifying paid links.
These links are bad for SEO because they often come from low-quality websites.
Google actively targets sites that buy or manipulate backlinks to boost authority with its Penguin algorithm artificially.
Example: A “natural” link appears in unrelated articles, e.g., a fashion blog linking to a software company.
How to spot on your site: Review your link profile. Check for patterns like repetitive anchor text or placements on irrelevant pages.
How to spot on other sites: Look for articles with phrases like “sponsored by” that lack proper nofollow tags. If a link appears in unrelated contexts, the site probably paid for it.
Poor quality content
Thin, irrelevant, or poorly written content turns users away. Search engines also see this as a sign that your site isn’t helpful.
Even well-known sites with high domain authority can suffer if they use black hat SEO. Just ask eBay. According to Social Media Today, the e-commerce site lost 80% of its organic search rankings back in 2014. This happened as the Google Panda Update targeted low-quality content and manipulative practices like keyword stuffing.
Example: A blog post re-words the same sentence repeatedly without adding new information.
How to spot on your site: Review each page for originality and relevance. If any content feels overly generic, rewrite it to align with user intent.
How to spot on other sites: Check if the content is shallow, not addressing user intent or providing useful information. See whether it’s too sales-focused or lacks substance. These are often telltale signs of trying to manipulate search rankings without helping users.
Sudden changes in site traffic
A sudden spike or drop in visitors could mean black hat tricks are at play.
Example: A competitor’s traffic jumps 10x in a week, suggesting they might be buying fake traffic.
How to spot on your site: Use Google Analytics to track your site’s traffic patterns. A sudden change could be due to black hat tactics or penalties.
How to spot on other sites: Compare competitors’ traffic trends. A competitor gaining in a short time might be buying traffic or using automated methods.
Clickbait or misleading titles
Headlines that overpromise but underdeliver make users leave quickly.
Example: Title: “Top 10 Tips for Boosting SEO Rankings Overnight!” Content: A generic overview of basic SEO practices.
How to spot on your site: Manually review your pages to make sure your titles accurately reflect the content. You can also use A/B testing to see how effective your titles are.
How to spot on other sites: Look for titles that don’t match the actual content on the page or overhype the promise without delivering substance.
Hats off to ethical SEO
So, to answer your question, “What is black hat SEO?” It’s a risky practice that can do more harm than good. White-hat SEO is always better. However, even the most ethical site owners can unintentionally fall into gray areas or face risks from others’ black hat practices.
Stay vigilant, audit your site regularly, and prioritize delivering value to your audience.
Too much to keep up with? Book an intro call with uSERP to help boost your search engine rankings and gain links the right way.
