Are you on the verge of working with a white-label SEO agency? Before hiring one, you need to know these five harmful gray hat SEO practices to provide 100% satisfaction to your clients.
As a reputed digital marketing company, you should double-check whether or not you’ll get authentic and faithful white-label SEO services from your provider.
Moving forward with gray hat SEO, it has the potential to boost a website’s position but may cost the person thousands of dollars in lost traffic and other worse consequences.
So, should you let your white-label SEO services incorporate this tactic?
Here’s everything you need to know.
What Is Grey Hat SEO? Does It Work?
Grey hat SEO sits between White Hat and Black Hat SEO, employing methods that could seem dubious or dangerous yet could still produce fruitful outcomes.
Grey hat SEO seeks to exploit loopholes in search engine guidelines without crossing into the realm of black hat tactics, usually to acquire content-rich sites or backlinks faster than their competitors.
While gray-hat SEO isn’t always against the law, it may be a riskier strategy than white-hat SEO.
But does it work?
Grey hat SEO might be an alluring opportunity that could give people an advantage over their competitors.
Who wouldn’t want that extra push, after all? But, unfortunately, it comes with several risks; if Google (or other search engines) discovers this trick, your client might face severe penalties.
So it could be a situation between success and harsh punishments. Additionally:
- Digital marketing agencies like yours might risk harming their hard-earned reputation if things become noticeable.
- Shortcuts that violate several criteria might be effective in the short run but not suitable for the long term.
5 Most Damaging Gray Hat SEO Tactics
Although the tactics linked with the Grey Hat SEO strategy are neither completely illegal nor unethical, SEO experts avoid utilizing them because of some unavoidable drawbacks. Some of the harmful tactics are:
1.) Purchasing Backlinks
Grey hat SEO persons will not be able to maintain a website, and it will also get flagged down; obtaining a fantastic ROI will be like a dream then.
If Google finds out that they purchase links to promote websites or brands, they risk punishment.
2.) Cloaking
Cloaking, in simpler words, is the process of showing the user information that differs from what you see in the search engine.
This approach is a flagrant offense of Google’s policies. Google has modified its policies and algorithms over the years so that they would promptly detect and flag this behavior.
Gray hatters do it to divert traffic from all potential sources to the website, improving its Google rating.
3.) Using Article Spinner And Highly Plagiarized Content
With each update, Google has improved to the point where it can now distinguish between unique articles and those that are not.
And for this reason, the search engine will quickly flag it if you continue to produce new content utilizing an article spinner.
At this point, you should also be aware that producing identical or highly plagiarized content is a straight no-no.
4.) Continuing To Stuff Keywords
In the early days of SEO, this method was a common practice of overusing keywords in the text of blogs, articles, web content, and so on.
Additionally, it shouldn’t be overtly commercial to include too many pointless keywords in a single paragraph. Again, Google can penalize the website that uses this strategy.
5.) Paying Followers
Some buy followers and pay them to provide favorable reviews and comments about themselves to increase their following.
Your client will be happy to see the crowd on their social media accounts. But no, that is not the case.
Almost no one will interact with their postings. On the other hand, it’s true that getting genuine, organic traffic takes time, but the wait is worthwhile. Organic customers are the most devoted ones.
The fact is, gray hat tactics are often implemented without fully understanding how they might affect a website long term. So, if you’re considering using any of the above techniques, carefully weigh the pros and cons before taking action.
Search engine optimization takes time, effort, and patience, but it’s worth it in the long run when your client’s website ranks high and gets organic traffic from Google.