What Is Black Hat Link Building & How to Play It Safe?

If you’ve recently launched your SEO and link building campaign, you should be careful about black hat link building. This is where some SEO experts try to manipulate Google with strategies that are against Google’s guidelines but sometimes generate quick results.

Here is a detailed black hat link building guide for you as a beginner. This will help you identify if the agency or freelancer you’ve hired to help build your backlink profile is transparent or risking your whole investment.

What is Black Hat Link Building?

Black hat link building is when link builders or SEO experts try unethical or manipulative techniques that violate Google’s guidelines to acquire backlinks for a website and artificially improve its ranking.

Some common examples of black hat link building are –

• Link farms – Networks of fake websites only built to link back.
• Cloaking – Showing search engines different content than real users.
• Private blog networks (PBNs) – Creating several fake blogs for artificial links.

This black hat approach can sometimes help boost rankings fast but often leads to penalties from Google e.g. lower search rankings or even removal from results.

Google is very good at catching these manipulative link tricks over time. So black hat linking usually does not work long-term.

Sometimes link builders try to hide what they do because it breaks Google’s algorithm. Their unethical techniques might significantly reduce a website’s search traffic.

Over time, Google’s rules became very good at detecting hidden SEO tactics. Three big Google updates focused on black hat tactics:

• Google’s Panda update (2011). – Targeted thin content, ad-heavy sites, and content farms. All tricks used by low-quality sites.

• Google’s Penguin update (2012)- Targeted keyword stuffing and manipulative link schemes – tricks often used by link farms.

• Google’s Link Spam update (2022) –  The update utilizes Google’s AI-based spam-prevention system, SpamBrain, to identify and neutralize unnatural links, including purchased links and sites used for building outgoing links.

It’s not always clear what specific tactics triggered the penalty. But anything that violates Google’s guidelines risks punishment. The results can be devastating to a website’s search performance.

So, black hat linking might provide short-term gains but white hat is always recommended for long-term success. It focuses on creating valuable content that earns genuine backlinks naturally.

Common Black Hat Link Building Tactics

Black hat link building is a way to get more links to a website using dishonest methods. Some common black hat techniques include:

1. Private blog networks

Private Blog Networks (PBNs) are a black hat link building technique where a group of websites is used solely for link building. They are similar to link farms, but PBNs are built more carefully to avoid detection.

This is done by purchasing expired domains with high authority, restoring previous content, and adding backlinks to the target website.

To create a PBN, black hat SEOs will register a large number of domain names and set up WordPress on them. They will generate tons of low-quality content using spun or scraped content and auto-posting tools. The sites will have a blog layout and be filled with fake pages and posts to appear like real sites.

The sites in the network are then interconnected, with links between the blogs in the network. This is done to control the flow of link equity and make the network appear more natural to Google.

Once the PBN is created, a few key sites in the network are used to link out to the target website that wants to rank. The links are built to appear natural, and embedded into fake content pages on the PBN sites.

Since all the sites are controlled by the same person, the network can rapidly build powerful links at scale. This variety of different-looking sites helps avoid footprint patterns.

The goal is for search engines to see all the incoming links and mistakenly think the target site is very reputable. In reality, the network was artificially created for manipulation. If detected, a PBN can lead to penalties.

Here is an example of how a private blog network (PBN) could be structured as part of black hat SEO efforts:

Suppose, the target website is an online shoe store called “FootwearUniverse.com” that sells all kinds of shoes. The owner registers 50 new domain names like:

• ShoeAddictZone.com
• TheShoeGossip.com
• ShoeloverBlog.info

On each domain, they install WordPress and build out a fake blog site optimized with shoe-related content, stock photos, fake comments, etc. to make them appear like legit hobby blogs.

The PBN owner then sets up interlinking between the sites to make it look more natural. For example, ShoeAddictZone links to and references posts on ShoeloverBlog.

Once the network is built out, the PBN owner selects a few key sites like ShoeAddictZone and TheShoeGossip to begin linking out to the target FootwearUniverse site.

These links are built into low-quality blog posts, for example, “Check out this great new shoe store I found – FootwearUniverse.com” so it looks natural.

But the reality is that FootwearUniverse and this whole PBN network are controlled by the same person. By controlling this network of fake sites, they can rapidly build artificial links and try to game search engine algorithms.

2. Comment spamming

Comment spam is the practice of posting irrelevant comments on a blog or website for the purpose of dropping a link to the spammer’s website. These comments are often characterized by being unrelated to the blog content and may contain links to the spammer’s site.

Black hat SEOs will use automated tools and bots to scrape the web for sites that allow comments. They then use content-spinning software to generate unique versions of comments. These comments do not provide any value – they exist only to inject links.

The comment spam is then automatically posted to millions of blogs, forums, articles, and other sites allowing user-generated content. The comments appear to be real but are not. Most avoid moderation since they contain unique variations of content.

The comments are seeded with anchor text links to optimize the anchor text profile. For example, a post about “dog toys” might get a spun comment with a link saying “We ordered our dog toys from this online pet store.”

By mass spamming links in comments across the web, the black hat SEO hopes to manipulate ranking signals and trick search engines into thinking their site is more reputable than it is. However, low-quality links often get detected and discounted.

3. Buying Links from Link Farm Sites

Buying links on link farms is a black hat SEO technique that involves acquiring links from low-quality websites created solely for the purpose of selling links. These sites do not share high-quality content and actively sell links, typically with the dofollow attribute.

4. Profile link building

Profile linking in SEO involves placing links on various platforms such as review sites, social networks, blogs, and forums. The goal is to build low-quality links for SEO. It is considered an important tool in SEO to promote a website and is part of creating the right link profile.

For example, they may create a bunch of fake plumber profiles on sites like MerchantCircle.com or ChamberofCommerce sites. The profiles contain made-up business info and links with anchor text like “emergency plumber in Phoenix”.

The profiles might be completely fake or duplicate real business info. Either way, they exist just to inject links, not to help users find services.

The practice violates the policies of many directories against duplicate or spammy profiles. The artificial profile links often get detected and discounted by search engines.

However, because it takes little effort to automate profile creation and linking, some black hat SEOs will use profile links in their campaigns.

5. Automated link building using tools

Automated link building using tools in black hat SEO involves the use of software to create a large number of links quickly. This is usually done with tools like GSA Search Engine Ranker and RankerX.

Some examples of tools used:

• Link blasters – Automatically spam blogs, forums, or articles with links. Used for comment spam and forum spamming.

• Link networks – Software to quickly build and manage networks of fake blogs and sites to control private blog networks (PBNs).

• Scrapebox – Tool that can automate link requests, blog comments, web 2.0 spamming, directory submissions, and other risky link building.

• RankerX – Automates blog commenting, forum profiles, social bookmarks, article submission, and other techniques.

• GSA Search Engine Ranker – Controversial tool with many functions like automated blog creation, indexing of links, and tiered link building.

• Ultimate Demon – Spins content and automates blog submissions, pinging social links, and bookmarks.

The key purpose of these tools is to enable black hat SEOs to build thousands of artificial links from multiple sources quickly and at scale.

The links aim to fool Google but often use recycled content and manipulative patterns. Use of these shady tools violates search engine guidelines and carries significant risk of penalties if detected.

6. Low-Quality Guest Posts

Low-quality guest posts in black hat link building refer to the practice of creating and publishing guest posts that are of poor quality, often with irrelevant or stolen content.

Instead of providing valuable and original articles, black hat practitioners focus on quantity over quality, using repetitive, irrelevant, or spun content to obtain backlinks. This approach aims to manipulate rankings but is against ethical SEO practices.

They will use automated tools to identify sites accepting guest contributions, especially niche blogs relevant to their industry. Then they generate mass volumes of low-quality articles and pay writers peanuts to create them or spin/scrape content.

These guest posts are stuffed with keywords and contain over-optimized anchor text links back to their client websites. However, the articles provide thin or duplicated content just to host a link, not to benefit the readers.

For example, a 500-word article on “dog training” may contain multiple exact match links saying “dog training collars.” The focus is solely on keyword anchors, not quality info.

By spamming guest posts on hundreds of industry websites, black hat SEOs aim to rapidly build unnatural links and rankings. But this violates guidelines against selling links or posting low-value articles just for a link. If caught, this approach can badly damage a site’s reputation.

7. Link Schemes

Link schemes are a type of black hat link building technique that involves manipulating the number and quality of inbound links to a website to influence its rankings.

This is often done through practices that violate Google’s SEO guidelines, such as buying or selling links, excessive link exchanges, or using automated programs to create links.

Black hat SEOs may set up elaborate schemes like:

• Private blog networks (PBNs) – Interconnected networks of fake blogs linking to each other and money sites.
• Scholarship link farms – Numerous sites hosted on different domains that exist just to link to a target site.
• Corporate link structures – A network of fake business profiles on directories all controlled by one entity and pointing to their main site.
• Forum link rings – Fake accounts on forums posting replies littered with links and upvoting each other.
• Article syndication – Mass publishing of similar articles on spun content sites to gain backlinks.

These coordinated structures allow black hats to systematically direct artificial links at their targets. The schemes try to disguise the artificial nature of the links.

Google has algorithms in place to detect unnatural link patterns. Participating in manipulative schemes risks site penalties if discovered. For this reason, link schemes are considered black hat tactics.

8. Spamming Link Exchange

Spamming Link Exchange in black hat link building refers to the practice where two or more website owners agree to exchange a large number of links with each other, regardless of the relevance or quality of the links. This is done to artificially increase the number of backlinks to their websites.

Black hat SEOs may abuse these systems by spamming low-quality link requests at scale. For example:

• They use automated tools to identify sites open to linking and blast out thousands of link exchange requests per day.
• The links they exchange often use over-optimized anchor text focused only on keywords, not natural language.
• They partner with other sketchy sites also using manipulative SEO tactics to exchange links.
• They exchange links with expired domains and pensioned off sites solely to preserve the link, without any relevant content.
• They exchange excessive links from low-quality sites, which adds no informational value.
• They employ reciprocation techniques within their own network of sites, trading links between properties they own or control.

The purpose is to rapidly build a large number of backlinks from diverse sources to try and artificially manipulate search rankings. But these automated, spammy tactics violate Google’s quality guidelines and could incur penalties if detected.

How to Identify Black Hat Link Building?

Identifying Black Hat Links can be tricky, but it’s crucial for protecting your website’s health and reputation. Here are some ways to identify potential black hat link building practices:

• Check Google Search Console for any manual actions against your site, which may indicate issues with toxic links.
• Perform a full backlink audit using SEO tools to generate a list of all external links pointing to your site.
• Carefully review linking domains – look for low-quality sites, unrelated niche content, and suspicious external links.
• Analyze anchor text of links – watch for exact match keyword text, NSFW/spammy terms, and foreign languages.
• Assess overall link profile – identify unnatural patterns, irrelevant niche links, and spikes in growth.
• Review site content where links originate- check for thin content, scraped or spun articles.
• Use SEO tools to gather additional metrics on linking domains like low traffic, and search rankings.
• Check links against databases of known toxic networks and link sellers.
• Sample audit a portion of links manually to assess relevance and quality.

Carefully inspecting linking domains, site content quality, anchor text patterns, and overall link profiles can reveal signs of manipulative or spammy link building.

Here are some tools and resources that can help you identify black hat links:

• Ahrefs: This SEO tool provides detailed backlink profiles, including information about the linking domains, anchor text, and potential spam flags.
• SEMrush: Similar to Ahrefs, SEMrush offers backlink analysis and can help you identify suspicious links.
• Google Search Console: This free tool from Google shows you which websites are linking to your site and can help you identify potentially harmful links.
• Moz Link Detox: This tool helps you disavow black hat links and protect your website from penalties.

Risks and Consequences of Black Hat Link Building

Black Hat Link Building might seem like a shortcut to SEO success, but it’s actually a dangerous game with serious consequences.

• Penalties

Search engines like Google have sophisticated algorithms that can detect and penalize websites using black hat techniques. Penalties can range from a drop in rankings to complete deindexing, meaning the website won’t appear in search results at all.

• Damage to Reputation and Trust

Engaging in black hat techniques can severely damage a brand’s online reputation. Users are becoming more aware of these practices and can easily spot low-quality, spammy, or misleading content and links. This can erode the trust users have in your brand, making them less likely to engage with your content or make purchases.

• Poor User Experience

Many black hat methods negatively impact user experience. For example, keyword-stuffed content and misleading links can lead to a poor user experience, which causes visitors to abandon your website.

• Short-Term Gains, Long-Term Losses

While black hat techniques may offer temporary improvements in search rankings, these gains are often short-lived. Google continually updates its algorithms to penalize websites using black hat techniques, leading to severe drops in traffic and loss of visibility.

• Potential Legal Consequences

In some cases, black hat techniques can lead to legal consequences. For example, hacking into a website to add links could potentially lead to lawsuits.

To avoid these risks and consequences, it’s recommended to focus on ethical and sustainable link building practices, such as creating high-quality content and earning links from authoritative and relevant websites.

Alternatives to Black Hat Link Building

Here are some recommended white-hat alternatives to black-hat link-building tactics:

• Focus on creating high-quality, useful content that naturally attracts links instead of keyword-stuffed, thin content.
• Do outreach and pitch guest posts to quality sites in your industry to earn links legitimately.
• Build relationships with influencers and partners to get mentioned and linked to from their sites.
• Leverage social media and community participation to gain links and referrals.
• Build local SEO relevance through citations, profiles, and reviews to get linked from directories and aggregators.
• Fix technical issues on-site and reclaim lost links through proper disavow procedures.
• Promote great content assets through PR and use press releases to gain media links.
• Create tools, resources, and assets that sites will be eager to link to and embed.
• Sponsor or speak at industry conferences and events to build brand visibility and links.
• Network with webmasters and avoid link buying or exchanging for direct placement.

The focus should be on building a great site, brand, and community. Unethical shortcuts like link buying, spamming, and manipulative schemes should be avoided.

How to Remove Black Hat Links

• Check Google Search Console for any manual actions, which indicate penalties applied by Google evaluators due to toxic links.
• Conduct a full backlink audit using SEO tools to generate a list of all external links to your site.
• Review linking domains – look for low-quality sites with thin content, unrelated topics, and suspicious external links.
• Analyze anchor text for exact match keywords, NSFW terms, and foreign languages as these may signal manipulative links.
• Assess the overall link profile for unnatural patterns, irrelevant niche links, and unusual growth spikes.
• Check site content where links originate for scraped, spun articles.
• Use SEO tools to gather metrics on linking domains like low organic traffic, and spammy rankings.
• Cross-check links against databases of known toxic networks and sellers.
• Manually sample audit a portion of links for quality and relevance.

For a deep dive into effective removal strategies, check out our comprehensive guide on cleaning up spammy backlinks.

Wrapping It Up

Ultimately, the risks and downsides of black hat link building greatly outweigh any potential short-term gains. The smarter long-term approach is investing in ethical white hat strategies that organically build credibility and authority.

However, quality link building takes immense effort and expertise. Rather than going alone, you can achieve great results safely by partnering up with a reputable agency.

mothasim

SEO & Growth Manager

A distinguished SEO and Business Development Consultant with a proven track record of helping businesses achieve outstanding results in the digital landscape. Throughout his career, Mothasim has worked with a diverse range of businesses, from startups to Fortune 500 companies.

His strategies are characterized by his meticulous attention to detail, data-driven decision-making, and a deep understanding of search engine algorithms. In his personal life, Mothasim enjoys hiking, photography, and volunteering in his community. He believes in giving back and is actively involved in mentoring aspiring SEO professionals. LinkedIn .