Grey Hat SEO to Use at Your Own Risk
“On a broad scale, I see SEO becoming a normalized marketing tactic, the same way TV, radio, and the print is traditionally thought of as marketing tactics.” –Duane Forrester
Search engine optimization (SEO for brevity) has been one of the tried and tested avenues for exposing your brand. It is particularly useful to startup companies and it helps established businesses leverage their conversion rates.
However, the world of SEO is incredibly competitive and it is without question that companies are continuously looking for more opportunities and techniques in making them better than other businesses. Indeed, regardless of whether a company is working with a digital agency in the Philippines or not, people can be very creative and employ ingenious strategies when it comes to ranking better in search results. Unfortunately, while this can be admirable and recommended eve, some individuals would no longer know where to draw the line between executing white hat SEO techniques and experimenting with black hat SEO strategies. More often than not, in their endeavor to rank first in search results, the distinguishing line becomes blurred and resultantly, the term grey hat SEO is coined.
But what is grey hat SEO? Would utilizing it result in being penalized by Google? Technically, no as grey hat still constitutes as a legitimate means of improving your rankings. However, this does not mean that they are seen as right, however, as more often than not, they are ethically dubious. In fact, they might even be construed as black hat SEO in the near future. In any case, it might be best to be aware of what these Grey Hat techniques are so that you would use them sparingly and with caution.
- Small website updates
One of the guaranteed ways to get a little boost on SEO is to have an updated website. This is because Google greatly favors websites with fresh content. In fact, websites who routinely give their websites small updates could likely expect a surge of traffic on their website. Small changes constitute those little adjustments made to a website that does not really involve fresh content. This can range from changing fonts to modifying body texts. These little changes can trick Google to think you have updated content and might lead them to re-crawl your website. Use at your own risk.
2. Social bookmarking
Riveting and relevant topics found on the web can be saved through social bookmarking. Furthermore, it indicates that it is good content and would give that particular website an increased chance for ranking higher. Social bookmarking functions a bit like social media marketing in a sense that you need to stay active and join communities and engage with people. Resultantly, you would lead more people back to your website and can be a pivotal technique in increasing your website traffic. However, be sure not to abuse this technique too much as you can be penalized for spamming if you submit too much from your website.
3. Article spinning
We all know how duplicate content is never good for your website as you might get penalized by Google. To address this, many websites have resorted to article spinning which would require content writers to use a website to rewrite an existing article for them using different words. Sure, the words might be all different but the thought and sentiment are the same. Of course, editing is still very much required as there are many instances wherein the articles produced would not even make the remotest sense. As a writer, this curtails your creativity and often undermines what you do. It is the lazy way out and of getting your website to rank. Moreover, this has been seen as a black SEO technique at times and may backfire should you intend on using it.
