Black hat tactics are no news to the SEO and online world, so much of the tactics have been covered time and time again. However, as with anything else in the web-based universe there are new black hat tactics coming out all of the time, so it’s important that you stay up to date so that you make sure you’re not making any mistakes or using any tactics that aren’t ethical.

Black hat techniques involve “spamdexing”, or in other words, manipulating how search engines perceive a web page and thus impact the way a web page ranks on a search engine like Google. These tactics are most frequently inconsistent with the search engines’ guidelines. Common tactics that have been covered by SEO authors include: hidden text, cloaking, and blog comment spam. The newer options? Read below.

Parasite hosting

While this black hat tactic has been covered before in the SEO world, it still isn’t on the radar of in the same way that other more common black hat tactics are. This particular black hat technique exploits domains that have strong authority, and the fact that those “high authority” domains are particularly favored by Google. For example, people may use parasite hosting to boost a site’s rank in SERP by placing backlinks on these high authority sites. Other times (and frequently) this tactic may be used to rank for a set of optimized keywords. This probably doesn’t need to be mentioned, but parasite hosting is used without the Webmaster’s permission and is illegal.

Google Bombing

Google bombing is a black hat tactic that involves targeting a specific webpage that is ranked number one in the SERPs for a particular search phrase. When a user goes to type in this particular common phrase into Google it brings different, often humorous or controversial results than what the phrase would generally show as a result. For some particularly humorous examples of Google Bombing, see this article.

Keep in mind that while entertaining and often humorous in nature, the idea of trying to hack Google search results is generally not good. It is interesting to see how it has been used (and likely is more targeted at pop-culture and news media than business), but it should still be on your radar as a negative, and up-and-coming black hat tactic.

Reporting a Competitor

This section is actually to remind you to cover your tracks. If this black hat tactic does anything, it should alarm you of what people do to get webpages of their competitors taken down.

That being said, Google takes private information on the web very seriously. People can report any site that seems to be displaying or not properly protecting customer information. Unfortunately, although well intended this is being used for others to take down their competitor’s page by reporting them to Google for not taking proper security measures.

Make sure you are taking every security measure to protect personal information. You do not want to be vulnerable to false (or perhaps even real) reporting, which could result in your page being taken down, and thus, losing all of your heard earned SERP placement to your competition.

Social networking spam

Part of combating this tactic is spending a lot of time on your social media strategy in the first place, which you can learn more about here from No Risk SEO, because it will help you catch this kind of spam on your own company. However, many companies end up doing the same thing on other social networking sites, which can be even worse.

Those who take part in social networking spam choose to target social platforms with spam comments which promote their website or target specific users on social networks. This is probably one of the most concerning new tactics. It was reported that social media spam Increased 355% in First Half of 2013 alone. Five popular types of popular social media spam include:

  • Bulk messaging
  • Spreading malicious links
  • Fraudulent reviews
  • Sharing undesired or excessive content
  • Click baiting and line jacking

Sneaky Redirects

Sneaky redirection pages are typically set up in large quantities and all target similar and related keywords or phrases. The goal of those who use this black hat SEO tactic is to create a false sense of related linking. These show up high in SERPs, but generally are so full of fake linking that they really don’t have readable content that actual users can actually engage with. Users will actually be redirected to another page when they go to click on one of these pages from a search engine result. This is common for attempts in high-pressure sales. It is absolutely misleading ranking, but the most unfortunate part is that people do fall for this tactic.

Rich Snippet Markup Spam

Earlier this year, Google started penalizing sites that employed rich snippet spam on their sites in order to manipulate SERPs. This is also something to be aware of, because it is actually one of the few on this list that could be done innocently, but still actually wind you up in trouble with Google.

Automated Queries to Google

You actually can tell if you are doing this if you receive a message on your browser that specifically says: “We’re sorry… but your computer or network may be sending automated queries” and you will be locked out of Google. Whoops! Unfortunately, many do this intentionally thinking that they will not be caught.

Google’s Terms of Service “…do not allow the sending of automated queries of any sort to our system without express permission in advance from Google”. Many people do use this black hat tactic by using software (such as WebPosition Gold) to send automated queries to Google to determine how their webpage ranks in Google search results. While it may seem beneficial to see where your ranking lies, it definitely is not worth the consequences.

Pingback spam

Pingbacks are external comments that are exclusive to the WordPress platform, and they can be used by sending a comment or link to another WordPress site automatically. Both sites need to have pingbacks enabled either on their entire site or on the post that’s referenced (Extra: A lot of sites have these enabled for their proper use, so it is fairly easy for people to exploit them).

Some people have been using this feature to spam other sites, which can also appear as false positive linking and manipulate SERPs.

Translated sites/machine translation

Some who use this black hat tactic may use programs (such as Google translate), which can translate content into other languages automatically for SEO purposes. They can then claim to have a post with content in multiple languages, and thus be ranked in multiple languages. However as anyone who has ever used Google translate likely knows, the practice of any online translation can result in highly unintelligible pages. Language, and especially entire articles written in one language, can not be translated by a machine. Some people write a post, translate it with an online platform to 6 different languages (5 of which are not actually intelligible once they are posted, and thus the ranking is higher, but the people who would actually be interested in the article in that language can’t actually read it). This can actually be in direct violation of Google’s Webmaster guidelines.

If you have interest in posting your article in multiple languages according to Google, you should definitely have someone correct the article for unique language nuances or have someone translate the article from the original language it was written in, rather than using a translator. This will avoid any problems with duplicate content or creating pages that are not appropriately written to increase rankings.

Cookie stuffing

Some practitioners use this black hat technique by placing cookies on a user’s computer without their knowledge. It is clear how this is in complete violation with Webmaster guidelines, as well as user security. The reason that people do this is because if the cookie is successful, and the user later visits the target website and completes a qualifying transaction (for example, making a purchase), the cookie stuffer (in this case, a black hat tactic) is paid a commission by the target. This is obviously an illegitimate technique.

Are there any black hat tactics that you’ve seen popping up onto the scene recently? Let us know in the comment section below.