In spite of the active implementation of the new algorithms in the search engines functionality, many administrators and store owners use forbidden optimization methods.
Let us review what ‘black’ SEO in Magento ® means, what such an approach is fraught with and how it can be avoided.
5 Black Black Hat SEO Strategies To Avoid
1) Cloaking
This term originates from the verb ‘to cloak’. It means that the real website content is hidden (cloaked) from search engines and other content is shown instead. The second site is well-optimized, done for people but is lowly rated for the moment.
This method is not effective but it can cause a lot of harm to your site. It is used with the help of different additional scripts. Be attentive while investigating this phenomenon and detecting it on your site, as it not only irritates customers but also deteriorates the site rating on search engines.
2) Invisible elements
Invisible links and text are very close to the first point mentioned above. There are a lot of ways to hide a link, e.g. make its color the same as the page background color, or set the size to 0 pixels.
But you need to realize that a search engine will understand the trick in any case, and will punish the administrator, the site or even the domain name. This method is often used to increase the volume of visits on site. Some links are hidden from users in order not to irritate them with over-optimization, and some – to earn more money.
3) Doorways
Doorways are sites that have a single purpose of redirection users to another site. It is generally clear that doorways themselves are located on non-optimized domains which do not affect the ‘good’ site directly. However, if a doorway site is banned then its main site will get a lot of bad links which in turn will drag it into the filter.
4) URL Spam
Mass posting in comments is a scourge of our time. Many administrators buy special extensions or pay for some online resources and those who do not wish to pay just check their comments manually.
It may be surprising however many optimizers still use such method of site popularization and even pay money for spamming. Special software is used to generate and then spread the links, the ‘victim’ sites are chosen by specific parameters. There are also properly trained people who spread that spam on many sites manually.
If you use this method correctly you may avoid Google filters, however, if your optimizer is not doing their job well your site will get a lot of bad links and will lose much of its rating.
5) Over-optimization
You write the description for people and not for the search engines! This is a very important thing to understand and remember, as there are currently a lot of algorithms being developed that filter out the sites containing spam keywords. Also, customers who visit such a site usually leave it after 15 seconds which increases the percent of refusals and harms the web store rating.
There are many other so-called ‘gray’ methods but all of them are controversial. They can do a good job when used correctly and carefully.
Also please check our themes for Magento ® which will draw customers to make purchases on your Magento ® store.
