What is Black hat SEO
Black Hat SEO is bad boy SEO
It’s the story of desperation, ignorance, shady tactics… and a whole lot of poor decision-making.
It’s what happens when someone breaks the rules, gets a website to rank—briefly—and then watches it vanish from the public eye.
Here’s the typical playbook:
- Reap the short-term gain.
- Ignore the long-term consequences.
- Break the rules.
- Assume there are no repercussions.
Could they be any more wrong?That’s what black hat SEO is in a nutshell.So now that you’ve got the overview, let’s take a closer look at what is black hat SEO and why it ultimately sabotages your SEO campaign.
Google Webmaster Guidelines — Bing Webmaster Guidelines
An Introduction to Black Hat SEO
What is Black Hat SEO Exactly?
Black hat SEO refers to a set of practices that violate search engine guidelines. In the early days of SEO, no one really knew how search engines ranked pages—not even the search engines themselves. Eventually, it became clear that backlinks were a major ranking factor. Backlinks acted as “votes of confidence” from other websites. Black hat SEO practitioners saw this and thought, “Why earn links when we can just build them?” They started placing links all over the internet—on forums, in blog comments, on random low-quality sites—solely to manipulate rankings. Their goal? Create as many backlinks as possible, regardless of relevance or quality. And for a while, it worked. But search engines got smarter. They began analyzing how a link was created and where it came from. User-generated links? Low value. Editorial links from reputable sites? High value. The result? The beginning of the end for many black hat SEO techniques.
Enter the Private Blog Network (PBN)
Not ready to give up, black hat SEOs came up with a new trick: build their own blog networks. They created multiple low-quality sites, linked them together to boost domain ratings, and then used those fake-authority sites to link to client websites. This strategy, known as black hat SEO link building, was just another attempt to trick search engines. But once again, search engines caught on. They identified PBNs, removed the trust value from those links, and penalized the websites involved. Just like that—boom. Game over. So if you’re wondering what is black hat SEO, the answer is simple: it’s a rule-breaking, manipulative shortcut that never ends well.
Black Hat SEO Techniques Everyone Should Avoid
There’s one thing about black hat SEO techniques: even if you’re not an SEO expert, you can usually spot them. They just feel… off. Here are a few common black hat SEO techniques to steer clear of:
- Keyword stuffing
- Sneaky redirects
- Worthless, low-quality content
- Link farms
For more examples, check out: The Rundown on Black Hat SEO Techniques and Why You Should Avoid Them.
Black Hat SEO Link Building: Cheap, Irrelevant & Risky
Black hat SEO link building is all about getting links by any means necessary. This includes posting in forums, dropping links in comment sections, and using automated tools to mass-distribute backlinks across spammy sites. It’s exhausting work—and it’s not even effective anymore.
Sure, it might bring a short-term boost. But more often than not, it ends with a complete removal from the search engine results pages (SERPs). That’s not a strategy. That’s sabotage.
Private Blog Network (PBN): A Risky Black Hat SEO Tactic
A PBN is the ultimate black hat tactic. SEOs create their own network of sites with artificially inflated domain ratings by building spammy links. Then, they use those sites to link to client websites, hoping to manipulate rankings. Sometimes they even show clients screenshots of tools that reflect these fake improvements. But search engines are no fools. They’re constantly refining algorithms to detect and devalue these schemes. So, what happens next? Your site gets penalized—or worse, completely deindexed. “Wha-chew gonna do when they come for you?”
17 Black Hat Techniques That Can Harm an SEO Campaign
That’s a Wrap!
Thanks for sticking around. Now that you’ve got a clear picture of black hat SEO, you know what to avoid. At MRK, we help clients rise in search rankings using proven white hat SEO strategies. With our Pay for Results approach, you only pay when you see real growth in your traffic. We’ll keep you in the loop, work transparently, and build your SEO the right way—no shady shortcuts.