The Ultimate Guide to Black Hat SEO (and how to avoid it!)
Search engine optimisation is important for any Fintech website to get visible in front of the right people (their ideal customers) on Google. But black hat SEO can put your site in hot water, and might ruin your chances of building traffic forever. Today is about the ultimate guide to black hat SEO and how you can avoid it on your Fintech website.
What is Black Hat SEO?
Black hat SEO is a manipulative style of search engine optimisation that violates webmaster guidelines. It is a collection of techniques that should be avoided and can result in penalties from search engines if caught. Implementing a black hat SEO technique can lead to faster developments in your target search result, but are pages often shrouded in spammy links and reach an irrelevant audience for your brand.
Furthermore, the Fintech industry already experiences problems relating to trust and credibility. Adding to this with sneaky SEO tactics is risky for your brand profile, and not worth the quick (yet insignificant) results you might achieve. For this reason, black hat SEO should be averted at all costs.
Black Hat vs White Hat
The overall goal for any website should be to provide a great user experience and solve the problem of your viewer. Google rewards sites who display they can do this, by ranking them higher on relevant search queries.
Typical SEO techniques include technical elements (such as improving site speed), on-page optimisation and content to target keywords. There are a number of different methods to achieving results in each of these three categories.
White hat SEO techniques follow Google’s webmaster guidelines: a set of rules and best practices for fintech digital marketers to follow. For example, content is created with the user in mind and links are built because that content is so good that other sites can’t help but relay back to you. When you get SEO right, you can experience a growth in organic traffic that (hopefully) leads to more conversions and higher revenue.
Instead, black hat SEO goes against the “spirit” of the internet by using deceptive practises in order to rank higher. When the search algorithm was simpler, it was easier to manipulate Google by creating spammy, irrelevant backlinks or duplicate content. However, multiple algorithm updates mean that it’s much harder to get away with negative SEO techniques nowadays. Penalties might occur both manually or algorithmically- and mean that your site won’t be as visible online so you’ll miss out on search traffic, leads and revenue.
Google Webmaster Guidelines
As mentioned, Google published a set of best practices known as Webmaster Guidelines. These are helpful for SEOs and developers alike when designing and optimising a website. The rulebook refers to a specific set of quality protocols, including preventing user-generated spam and considering how each of your pages are primarily valuable for the user: not search engines.
Going against these guidelines will trigger an update in Google’s “RankPage” algorithm which controls where you are visible on search. This will either downgrade your site, or make it completely invisible to relevant search terms- something you clearly want to avoid. The guidelines also highlight a number of techniques to avoid, which we’ll now discuss.
Examples of Black Hat Techniques to Avoid
Here are five examples of a black hat SEO tactic to avoid:
Sneaky redirects
2. Cloaking
3. Link building schemes
4. Keyword stuffing
5. Duplicate content
Sneaky Redirects
Redirecting a user means changing the URL of the page they’ve clicked on in order to show them different content. Sometimes, redirects are necessary when you change your domain name, merge websites or delete pages- these are typically 301 redirects.
However, black hat redirecting means that you are deceiving search engines by hiding the content from visibility. It means your site displays one thing to bots who crawl your site, and another thing entirely to human users. For example, when users click on the desktop version of the site, it’s normal, but clicking through mobile redirects to a completely different page. This is known as a sneaky redirect.
Cloaking
Cloaking is a black hat tactic referring to when your site displays different content between human users and a google bot. Similar to sneaky redirects, it hides the true content of the site through HTML coding in order to appear relevant for unrelated search terms, leading to higher rankings. One example that Google highlights, is showing text to their crawlers but displaying images on a desktop or mobile device. In order to avoid cloaking, one step in the right direction is to ensure that your alt text is as accurate as possible when you add images to the pages of your Fintech site.
Link Building Schemes
We all know that when high domain authority sites link back to yours, it spreads some of their SEO ‘juice’ and can help your site move up the search engine rankings for relevant terms. However, when links appear as spam to Google, your site might be flagged and penalised. One example of this is paid links, as well as excessive backlink exchanges between another site and your own. Remember, hyperlinks must only be used when the content is relevant to the anchor text- and provides value to your viewer.
Keyword Stuffing
Keywords are an important part of your optimisation process as they let search engines know which terms are related to the content on your page. However, keyword stuffing is a problem that a lot of newbie’s run into, even when they are not trying to practice a black hat technique. This refers to the overuse or unnatural use of keywords, resulting in a negative user experience. In other words, you are prioritising search engine rankings above human viewers, which goes against the core of the quality webmaster guidelines.
Duplicate Content
Finally, search engines give a green light to original content that is not scraped, copied or duplicated from anywhere else on the web. Apart from the obvious issue of copyright infringement; duplicate content does not provide added value to your site users compared to what they can find elsewhere- which means that search engines will penalise this practice. Plus, it’s lazy and there is ALWAYS a new way to imagine a tired topic. (Just get in touch with us here if you’re looking to make waves with your fintech content!).
White Hat SEO
While it’s not as quick and easy to get results, it’s worth going with white hat SEO methodologies every single time. As a long term strategy, staying above board on the search engine rules will mean the wins you get should last, and you won’t risk penalisation. It also means that you’ll increase your domain authority and it will be easier to rank for different search terms as your site grows in popularity and traffic.
Clearly, it’s important to work with someone who knows what they’re doing when it comes to SEO and white hat techniques. If you’re looking for an SEO strategy, we can help overhaul your site the Google-safe way. Get in touch with us here or by emailing hello@thesearchcure.com