Violating Google’s Rules: Several Examples of Black Hat SEO to Avoid

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Google’s algorithms is a mystery for most people nowadays. However, Google gives us clues on how to be a “good person” through its Webmaster Guidelines. Unfortunately, these guides are meant to leave little room for speculation, yet some gray area remains. While they are written in easy-to-use language and outline some of the practices that may lead to a site being removed entirely from the Google index or otherwise impacted by an algorithmic or manual spam action, there are no real-world examples, especially for good reason.

Here are some reasons of why Google banned your website in no time:

1. Participating in Link Schemes

Any links intended to manipulate a site’s ranking in Google search results may be considered a link scheme, as was the case in 2011, when the New York Times uncovered a link-building scheme by J.C. Penney. The retailer ranked number one for bedding, dresses, area rugs, and other vague and specific keywords, with “uncanny regularity” for several months. After consulting with an industry expert, the New York Times found 2,015 pages with phrases like “casual dresses,” “evening dresses,” “little black dress” or “cocktail dress,” which all bounced directly to the main page for dresses on JCPenney.com.

J.C. Penney said they did not authorize and were not involved or aware of the posting of links that the New York Times sent to them. J.C. Penney immediately fired their SEO agency, but not before Google took manual action against the brand for violating its guidelines. Overnight, J.C. Penney was vanished from search results for anything other than branded keywords (a.k.a. direct searches for J.C. Penney). It took about three months for J.C. Penney to move up the rankings and regain lost rankings.

2.  Creating Doorway Pages

Doorway pages are those practices that are large sets of poor-quality pages where each page is optimized for a specific keyword or phrase. Google always dislikes upon manipulating search engines and deceiving users. In 2006, BMW suffered for setting up doorway pages to attract search engines and redirect traffic to its German website, BMW.de. BMW’s page rank was reduced to zero. While BMW stated it did not intend to deceive users, the company added, “However, if Google says all doorway pages are illegal we have to take this into consideration.”

3. Selling Links that Pass PageRank

Selling links that pass PageRank violates Google’s quality guidelines; this includes advertorial pages with embedded links that pass PageRank. Google recently penalized Interflora, even removing it from branded search results, for using advertorials to solely influence search rankings. An example of this, is that Interflora reportedly sent bloggers floral arrangements in exchange for links. This was once considered a gray area, but is clearly black hat now.

4. Using a “Bad” Blog Network

If your site belongs to a blog network whose purpose is to create backlinks, Google will de-index them and penalize you. In 2012, this happened to Build My Rank, which ultimately closed down and relaunched as HP Backlinks. The relaunch, however, has many people wondering if (and when) Google will go after the network again.

5. Cloaking

Giving different content or URLs to human users and search engines will hurt your rankings. Google bans this practice, because it provides users with different results than they expected. Unfortunately, some sites unknowingly use cloaking. For example, if your site is compromised, hackers may use cloaking to make the hack harder for the site owner to detect.

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