Web search and black hat: 4 forbidden practices

When you want to be visible on the internet, organic search is naturally the first thing you think of. But you also need to know the good practices — and above all, the practices to avoid so that you are not banned from Google!

What does black hat mean in web search?

Literally "black hat", the term is a reference to westerns in which the "bad guys" wore a black hat and the "good guys" a white one (white hat).
Black hat in search therefore refers to any web practice deemed bad or dishonest. Such practices can boost your visibility online — otherwise nobody would be tempted to use them — but they can above all get your site blacklisted once Google detects them.

These practices go against Google's rules. The risks: your site receiving penalty points (and therefore reduced visibility), or even being removed from search results altogether. And no brand wants that for its site.

Even though Google clearly lists the prohibited practices in search, not everyone knows them or has the time to read them. You may even be using some of these practices without realising they constitute black hat.

This article aims to introduce or serve as a reminder of 4 such practices that may tempt you but which can cost you more than you stand to gain.

1. Keyword stuffing in text

In the past, Google modulated its results according to the number of times a given keyword phrase appeared on the site in question.
Concretely, to simplify: if I placed the phrase "publishing house Lyon" 20 times on my page, I would appear in the top results when someone searched Google for "publishing house Lyon". It did not matter whether the text was coherent or readable, as long as I included my keyword phrase as many times as possible.

But that was then. To spare users from unreadable pages that served only to include a given keyword phrase as many times as possible (even when the content was not relevant), the Google Panda update of 2011 changed everything.

Today, keyword phrases are still used, but Google considers that the density of these phrases should be between 2 and 4% on any given page. Beyond that, it is considered black hat — keyword stuffing without logic, irrelevant to the user. In short, exactly the kind of content Google does not want and therefore penalises when it detects it.

2. Keyword stuffing in metadata

Just as stuffing keywords into your content is useless — even dangerous for your search ranking — stuffing keywords into your metadata is equally something to avoid.

The description of a web page is what appears in Google results pages. It is generated automatically if you do not fill it in yourself, but will then be rather unappealing, simply reproducing the first words of your page and cutting off sentences if they exceed 160 characters.

For your search ranking and to better encourage users to click on your result, filling in this description and the accompanying metadata is important. But merely repeating your keywords to appear in a better position will be counterproductive.

3. Paying for or selling links

Linking (setting up links that point to your site) is a significant part of search optimisation. The more sites that link back to yours, the more Google will consider your content relevant (especially if the sites in question have good positioning). The algorithms react like humans in this respect: a site that many others reference must be a relevant site, otherwise nobody would mention it.

The temptation is therefore strong to pay for sites to place a link to yours, or conversely, to "sell" links.

But these links are not organic or natural, and they guarantee no coherence whatsoever. On the contrary. A publishing house site linking to a hairdresser's site would make no sense; users would have no interest in it, and this would generate low-quality links.

And it turns out that irrelevant links, from obviously dubious sources, have a negative impact on a site's search ranking. Having links is a good thing — except when they come from irrelevant sources. Bear this in mind when working on this aspect of your search strategy.

4. Comment spam

Still on the subject of links from other sites to yours: you may be tempted to leave a comment on various blogs, websites, forums and social networks to include a link back to your site.

This is nowadays pointless: in 2005, Google added the "No follow" attribute, which allows the owner of a site/blog/forum/etc. to exclude from search ranking any links placed in their comments.
In practice, a link bearing the "No follow" attribute is ignored by Google. That link might as well not exist — the effect would be the same.

All the same, you may be tempted to spam comments on multiple sites. If Google does not take it into account, at least it will generate traffic, you might think. But this is clearly a practice forbidden by Google — neither Google nor human users appreciate spam. If the algorithm notices this practice, once again, you can lose more than you hope to gain.

We hope this list of 4 practices to avoid will be useful to you — either preventing you from using them in the first place, or prompting you to stop before Google catches you out!

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