SEO has always been a patience game and if right strategies are applied, it sets a strong foundation for digital success. However, some impatient digital marketers use certain banned or unacceptable SEO practices to manipulate search rankings in a much faster way than traditional or genuine SEO practice.
Such a practice is known as SEO spam, a black hat SEO technique. SEO spam is often used by your competitors to bring your SERP ranking down and push themselves up.
In this post, we will see 5 most used SEO spam ways that can harm a business’s reputation. However, before we move ahead, let us have a brief look at what SEO spam is and then the 5 SEO spam ways.
What is SEO Spam? A Brief Introduction
SEO spam is a type of malware attack induced by hackers to manipulate SERP rankings. It is a black hat SEO technique in which spammers fill your website with spammy links, malicious/irrelevant content, or spam malware.
The aim of SEO spam is to bring your website ranking down by creating irrelevant backlinks from low quality sites and other tactics. This practice may be carried out by your competitors or spammers/hackers.
In some cases, spammers posing as digital marketers also use SEO spam to quickly show results to their clients and get paid. However, the results are temporary and may harm the website’s reputation in the long run.
5 SEO Spam Ways that Can Destroy Businesses and Consumers
Different SEO spam practices used by spammers may include:
Cloaking
Cloaking is one of the commonly used SEO spam practices that hackers or spammers use. This is a type of black hat SEO strategy in which the content and other information like URL or page shown to search engine is different from what actually they are.
For example, your website might be about gambling but it appears as a travel website to the search engines.
It is done by creating a new page along with a redirect. As a result, search engines are only able to crawl the hidden page instead of the actual one. Not only this but the users also get confused when they visit such a page. This is because the information they expect is not there on the webpage.
We must say that cloaking is a deliberate effort to fool search engine bots to manipulate rankings. When caught, it can result in serious Google penalties.
Banner Spam
This is another technical SEO spam strategy that not only fools search engines but also the users. Websites with approved Google Adsense host visual advertisements. These ads have a code inserted in them.
Now, what spammers do is change the code and as a result, the ad shown is different from the link it directs users to. With this SEO spam, spammers change the ad code in a way that takes users to a fraudulent website when they click on the ad.
Not only the Google ads but it is also seen that spammers can also hack CTA buttons present on your website like download button, form submission button, and other links.
Banner spam can harm the credibility of the website significantly dropping the rankings. Additionally, the visitors to the website are also at risk of getting scammed.
Hence, this SEO spam method can affect both businesses and consumers.
Japanese Keyword Hack
Japanese keyword hack is another SEO spam tactic in spammer’s arsenal. This hack is so named because it is primarily executed by hackers from Japan and it uses a Japanese script.
In this technique, the spammers force Japanese characters and content into your website’s descriptions and titles. This is done by exploiting your website’s CMS. They may also create new spam pages in Japanese language and redirect them to compromised platforms in order to generate money.
This hack may also rank your website for hundreds of Japanese keywords because of indexing of the spam pages created by hackers. That too without your knowledge.
Remember, fixing a Japanese keyword hack is nothing less than a severe headache. However, to do this, you may need a special software.
Hacked Content
One of the commonly used spam SEO tactics is hacked content. As the name suggests, this spam includes the introduction of junk material, links to compromised sites, or malicious codes to get user’s data into a good website’s content. This SEO spam is generally carried out on websites with security vulnerabilities.
Hackers make use of security vulnerabilities to inject a hidden malware which could be in the form of a code and/or link to compromise the website.
There could be many reasons for implementing this SEO spam from getting sensitive user’s information like credit card data to compromising the website’s quality.
If a website is suffering from hacked content SEO spam, its users are at a risk too. They may unknowingly download a malware from the website into their system, be redirected to a phishing website, or leak their personal information.
The worst part here is that Google will penalize websites that have hacked content and this will drop their rankings as well.
Link Injection and Redirects
This is another smart SEO spam strategy where the hackers insert hidden malware links on a website’s webpage. Again, the aim is to trick users to a spammy or phishing website to either get sensitive information or incur financial losses.
In the case of link injection, the hacker embeds a malware code into your website that redirects the user to some other link instead of the original one.
If there is any spammy link in your website, Google search console will give a reminder to have a look and remove that link.
Here also, the SEO spam can severely harm the business as well the consumers.
The Last Box
With the rise in technology, SEO spam is also rising. This is not only solely being done to harm the website but its users also. From cloaking to hacked content, there are numerous ways that spammers employ to compromise quality websites. In this post, we have highlighted top 5 SEO spam ways that can destroy business and consumers.
So, if you are facing any of these issues, take appropriate and timely measures to minimize the risk and keep your website and website’s users safe.
