Long Term Effects of Blackhat SEO

In a previous article we covered if businesses should prepare for the effects of targeted negative
SEO, but never got into the potential long term effects of negative practices.

This article is going to go through the long term effects of using black hat SEO techniques, how
it can affect your business site and prevent you from recovering the SEO of your site.

What is Black hat SEO?

The Reliable SEO Metro defines Negative SEO as “a black hat technique that uses bad text
links with negative connotations linking back to a competitor’s site, linking competitors to link
farms and free-for-all sites, etc.” It can also include hackers or malware that has infiltrated the
site to change or shut it down. When these techniques are used they act as a barrier, harming
the visibility of the site and causing it to be demoted by Google and the SERP (Search Engine
Ranking Positions) to be lowered.

Although in the past this form of SEO would have helped increase the ranking of your site, it
now only serves as a hindrance and prevents the site from gaining positions on a results page.
This was as a direct effect of numerous algorithm changes brought into play by Google, the most
notable of which was the Penguin update of May 2012.

Would using Black Hat SEO provide fast results in half that time?

To put it bluntly the answer is NO! Although it used to create fast results and costs less, it
doesn’t work that way now. Google have put into place a number of tactics to prevent the
unethical practice of Black Hat SEO. The key one of these is the development of a number
of complex algorithms that prevent any kind of black hat SEO from working. This has left a
number of unreliable SEO companies unable to offer their previously exceedingly cheap deals
for places on Google.

What are the long term effects of Black Hat SEO?

What some people don’t know is the continued damaging effects black hat SEO has on a website
even though the program may have been stopped. Each individual link is logged in the back of
the website and gives the site a form of portfolio. This portfolio is vital in influencing where the
site is placed in a search engine. Black hat SEO produces an influx of poor and irreverent links
at once to this portfolio which act as a black marker each time the site is reviewed and can push
it down the rankings. This will continue to act against a website until the offending links are
removed.

What can be done to resolve it?

The long term effects of this are that a large number of the links become irremovable and have
a persistent harmful affect on your SEO. To combat and these issues and recover the site takes
a long time and a considerable amount of effort. Such quick fixes like Google’s disavow tool
shouldn’t be the first port of call. The emphasis should be placed on trying to remove theses links
manually, to learn more about the approach for resolving negative links click here.

Many people go for cheap SEO thinking they are buying a quick and easy way to help their
website, this is not the case and many businesses that go for this option are in fact purchasing
the long term damaging effects of black hat SEO. We here at Red Cow Media provide a cost
effective and long term service that will help get the most out of your website.

For more information or if you’re interested in joining us, visit our website by clicking here