What is Black Hat SEO?

Q: What is Black Hat SEO?

What is Black Hat SEO? In the search/digital marketing world, Black Hat SEO relates to strategies and tactics that improve search engine rankings in ways that fall outside of the search engines guidelines or terms of service. Black Hat techniques try to scam the system. They may work for a while, but we believe that Google actively works against Black Hat techniques and will blacklist websites using these techniques if discovered.

Q: What is White Hat SEO?

What is White Hat SEO? The White Hat techniques we use work long-term because they rely on generating quality content that Google users actually find relevant. As a result, Google rewards these efforts over the long term with consistent high rankings.

Q: Which is Better? Should I Use SEO or SEM?

Which is better? Should I use SEO or SEM? Experts on either side could argue that one is more effective than the other. However, we view high-quality SEO as a foundation for high-quality SEM, and for the best results, both strategies should be implemented.

Q: Why should I use a Bangkok-based SEO Agency?

Why should I use a Bangkok-based SEO Agency? We are certified Google Partners and experts in all aspects of SEO Optimisation and Search, Display, Mobile and Video ads. Our team has decades of relevant experience, and are able to help optimise your business website and to manage your digital marketing campaigns, such as search ads, display ads, shopping ads, video ads and more. Located in the heart of Asia, our overheads are also lower, whilst still retaining the professionalism and experience you would expect from a leading SEO/SEM Agency.

Black Hat Social Media – what it is and how it may affect SEO

Black Hat social media marketing is emerging quickly and spawning a new era of web spam. This affects the social media sites themselves, the users, plus the businesses using the site for marketing.

While many people are beginning to recognize this trend, there is a lack of accurate information on how Black Hat social media influences search engine optimization (SEO).

So let’s take a look.

What Exactly Is Black Hat Social Media Marketing?

First off, Black Hat is an expression originally used to refer to a type of hacker — one who violates computer or website security for very little reason other than maliciousness and for personal gain.

In the search/digital marketing world, Black Hat SEO relates to strategies and tactics that improve search engine rankings in ways that fall outside of the the search engines guidelines or terms of service.

In contrast, White Hat SEO refers to SEO strategies and tactics that are ethical or “lawful” — i.e., they fall within the search engines guidelines.

You wont be able to find many definitions for Black Hat social media marketing, so allow us to define it here. Black Hat social media marketing is an effort to utilize a social media site for some kind of gain, using techniques and methods which are outside the social media websites guidelines. In simple terms, it’s gaming the system, or “cheating”.

Types Of Black Hat Social Media Marketing

So what are a few examples of Black Hat social media marketing, you may well ask? So, let’s list a few:

Buying fake Likes, YouTube Subscribers, +1s, etc. from click farms
Spreading hyperlinks that pose a privacy risk
Using a program to automatically follow and unfollow new accounts
Making fake social media marketing profiles to like, share, comment or gather information
Posting artificial negative critiques on competitors pages or positive critiques on your own site
Securing social profiles with rivals names, ranking them in Google, and posting negative comments

These are just a couple of samples of Black Hat social media marketing. But really, there are so many ways you can use social media marketing to positively or adversely impact a company that are outside of the social sites planned purpose.

Ways It Can Influence Google Search

Now we get towards the heart regarding the matter. Can Black Hat social media marketing affect SEO?

Lets check out a number of hypothetical examples, and then we can leave it up to the SEO community to determine for themselves.

Purchasing Fake Followers, Likes And Shares

According to Search Engine Land, social signals are growing as ranking factors as the search engines determine how to take advantage of our social interaction and actions. Most SEO professionals will agree that social signals have some effect on SEO, regardless of if they’re not a direct ranking factor.

For instance, if a person were to buy likes, tweets, +1s and shares to fake an interaction with content, this could inaccurately inflate the contents standard of authority, especially if the profile listing this social interaction is public and crawlable by Google.

Improving Fake Accounts

When anyone create fake accounts, they usually have the ability to work under an alias. For example, if we create a fake account with a rivals name and optimize it, this fake profile may rank when it comes to rivals name. Users will then see that profile in Google search.

If the fake account outranks some of the rivals real web properties, that can hurt them by impinging to their click share. Or, if what exactly is displayed when you look at the search listings puts off the user, that could hurt the overall brand image and/or reputation.

Artificial Feedback

Unfortunately, we have seen this Black Hat social media marketing approach pretty often, mainly due to our years doing work in online reputation management. Someone will leave a fake negative review about a business on a social media marketing site, and it’ll persist! This may really hurt the company in the event that that negative review ranks well, and a potential customer finds the rating upon performing a web search.

Furthermore, reviews that contain the right structured data markup can display as a rich snippet in search results — and users seeing a low star count for a business may choose to take their business elsewhere. There has additionally been a great deal of discussion about whether negative ratings impact SEO (and if so, how), but there is no clear answer about this, although we feel that it DOES indeed have an impact.

Poor Quality Social Sites

We know that when you look at the SEO world today, if you get a link from the wrong website it could become a major issue. This then begs the question: Could a share through the wrong social networking website hurt your SEO?

As we see in link analysis tools like Majestic SEO, links are generally gauged according to the domain/page authority, topical relevance, etc. If you have huge number of shares from spammy, off-topic social media marketing user profiles, could that damage your rankings?

Might Black Hat Social Media For SEO Be An Issue In The Future?

It is impossible to know for sure, however with the increase in social media marketing as a marketing method, there is great reason to imagine that this may be a growing field. Many people contemplate that social media shares, likes and interactions will become more and more important to SEO in the future as a guide to how popular a site/company is, so it seems clear that individuals will then try to game the “signals”.

What Can You Do About It?

Each social networking site is unique, and every situation where Black Hat social media marketing may hurt SEO is also unique. While this is certainly true, there are tools you can make use of to fight Black Hat social media marketing.

Mark Things As Spam. Pretty much on all social media sites you are able to mark things as spam or report them. Do so.
Contact Legal. Most social media sites have an area to contact the company’s legal department; this is often effective for those who have a genuine claim.
Report Spam On Google. If you think something should not get ranked in Google, you may make use of the good old webspam reporting form on Google.

Black Hat social media marketing is available to you right now and it also is hard to deny that there’s no way it can hurt SEO.

What do you believe? Is Black Hat social media marketing a threat today? Will it be a more substantial threat into the future?

We at CMYK [SEO] think that it’s a problem right now and have been on the receiving end of the effects of unethical Black Hat Social Media Marketing.

We expect this to only get worse.

What is Black Hat SEO?

What is Black Hat SEO? In the search/digital marketing world, Black Hat SEO relates to strategies and tactics that improve search engine rankings in ways that fall outside of the search engines guidelines or terms of service. Black Hat techniques try to scam the system. They may work for a while, but we believe that Google actively works against Black Hat techniques and will blacklist websites using these techniques if discovered.

What is White Hat SEO?

What is White Hat SEO? The White Hat techniques we use work long-term because they rely on generating quality content that Google users actually find relevant. As a result, Google rewards these efforts over the long term with consistent high rankings.

So what are a few examples of Black Hat Social Media Marketing, you may well ask?

We believe the following are instrumental in the spread of Black Hat SEO:
Buying fake Likes, YouTube Subscribers, +1s, etc. from click farms
Spreading hyperlinks that pose a privacy risk
Using a program to automatically follow and unfollow new accounts
Making fake social media marketing profiles to like, share, comment or gather information
Posting artificial negative critiques on competitors pages or positive critiques on your own site
Securing social profiles with rivals names, ranking them in Google, and posting negative comments
These are just a couple of samples of Black Hat social media marketing. But really, there are so many ways you can use social media marketing to positively or adversely impact a company that are outside of the social sites planned purpose.

Which is Better? Should I Use SEO or SEM?

Which is better? Should I use SEO or SEM? Experts on either side could argue that one is more effective than the other. However, we view high-quality SEO as a foundation for high-quality SEM, and for the best results, both strategies should be implemented.

Why should I use a Bangkok-based SEO Agency?

Why should I use a Bangkok-based SEO Agency? We are certified Google Partners and experts in all aspects of SEO Optimisation and Search, Display, Mobile and Video ads.

Our team has decades of relevant experience, and are able to help optimise your business website and to manage your digital marketing campaigns, such as search ads, display ads, shopping ads, video ads and more.

Located in the heart of Asia, our overheads are also lower, whilst still retaining the professionalism and experience you would expect from a leading SEO/SEM Agency.

CMYK [SEO] Agency

Need more Sales & Leads? Better organic rankings? Hire Bangkok's Leading SEO/SEM Agency. Get a FREE SEO Audit Report! Keywords, Content, Titles, Metadata, Backlinks, Social Media and more. Maximize your paid and organic visibility with our SEO/SEM Services. #seo #sem #localseo #linkbuilding #organicrankings #ppc #bannerads #contentmarketing #whitehat #bangkok #thailand #asia #asean #cmykseo #cmykseoagency

CMYK [Group]

Robert Weinman ★★★★★ 5 months ago
Chris is an amazing guy to work with. Top quality work done in a timely professional manner. … More Personal and caring service. Old fashioned quality in a fast paced modern world. Excellent value pricing as well. Fantastic!!
Matt Burns ★★★★★ 4 months ago
I have been working with Chris now for over 10 years on various projects, from photoshoots … More for mutual clients, right through to Chris's company building me 3 websites now. Each project has had a great end product, excellent follow up service and even site hosting at a very reasonable price. I highly recommend him & his companies services 10/10.
Matthew Burns ★★★★★ 3 years ago
I have been working with Chris now for over 10 years on various projects, from photoshoots … More for mutual clients, right through to Chris's company building me 3 websites now.Each project has had a great end product , excellent follow up service and even site hosting at a very reasonable price.I highly recommend him & his companies services10/10.

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Black Hat Social Media Marketing – what it is and how it may affect SEO

What is Black Hat SEO?

What Exactly Is Black Hat Social Media Marketing?