A Complete Guide: What is Gray Hat SEO | How does Gray Hat SEO work
If you are a blogger or digital marketer, you must have heard about Gray Hat SEO. Do you know what Gray Hat SEO is? Although the name Gray Hat is rarely heard, most of the time, the terms of White Hat SEO and Black Hat SEO are listened to.
Many people do not even know about this technique of Gray Hat. But somewhere, he unknowingly uses gray hat SEO techniques.
Friends, gray hat SEO techniques are a combination of white hat SEO and black hat SEO. If you use these techniques to do SEO of your website, then you can get benefit from it compared to other SEO techniques.
You have to take precautions while using gray hat SEO techniques. If you do not do this, your gray hat SEO can turn into black hat SEO.
In this post, we have provided all the essential information related to Gray Hat SEO, such as what is Gray Hat SEO, why it is necessary, what are its advantages and disadvantages, etc. We have also told you about Gray Hat SEO Techniques, which will be very helpful.
Read the article carefully for complete details. But first of all, we will know what Gray Hat SEO is.
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What is Gray Hat SEO?
Gray Hat SEO is a technique of SEO that uses some techniques of Black Hat Seo in such a way that it is not visible to the bots of search engines, and the algorithm of search engines can also easily crawl that post.
Gray hat techniques do not strictly follow Google's guidelines. Gray Hat SEO is less than White Hat SEO but riskier than Black Hat SEO; using it may or may not get your website banned on search engines. This is an impure form of White Hat SEO.
In gray hat SEO, priority is given to search engines and people equally. In the gray hat SEO technique, links are not bought like black hat SEO, but links are acquired through platforms like blogs and social media platforms like Facebook, YouTube, etc.
Sometimes the rules of search engines are violated in gray hat SEO, but like black hat hackers, gray hat SEO hackers have no such intention.
Simply we can say, Gray Hat SEO is a combination of White Hat SEO and Black Hat SEO techniques, using which you can improve your site's ranking without utilizing any harmful methods.
Now may you understand what Gray Hat SEO is? Let us now know the Importance of Gray Hat SEO.
Is Gray Hat SEO Illegal?
Gray hat SEO is not illegal. There is no law being violated by grey hat SEO techniques. However, grey hat SEO goes against prohibited search engine practices that can get your site banned from the search engine results pages.
Importance of Gray Hat SEO?
It is essential to understand Gray Hat SEO as it is a cross between Black Hat SEO and White Hat SEO, which is an attempt to improve your site's ranking while keeping you away from all harmful attempts and the risk of those efforts.
If you use white hat SEO techniques, then sometimes it takes you a long time to get its results, and if you use black hat SEO techniques, then not now; then after some time, you can be punished by google and other search engines.
In such a situation, gray hat SEO is an excellent option, using the techniques in which you can get a good rank in SERP in a short time, so it is an excellent SEO technique.
Advantages of Gray Hat SEO
Gray hat SEO techniques are more beneficial than any other SEO technique. Following are the advantages of Gray Hat SEO.
- The most significant advantage of gray hat SEO is getting a good rank in SERP.
- By doing gray hat SEO techniques, you get its results in a very short time.
- Apart from this, there is very little risk in gray hat SEO.
Disadvantages of Gray Hat SEO
Sometimes by using gray hat SEO techniques, you may also have to face some negative effects, which are as follows.
- Using gray hat SEO techniques, if any of your competitors or any other user reports against you on search engines, then in such a situation, your website may also have to face a penalty.
- Using gray hat SEO and marketing techniques can give you negatively affect your brand image.
Some Famous Gray Hat SEO Examples?
- Commenting on blogs in a way that will get you a backlink.
- Building links through low-quality websites to boost your domain authority.
- Exchanging (paid) links with money.
Gray Hat SEO Involves:
- Paying for positive reviews of your business or creating new accounts to write them yourself, posing as your customers.
- Spin content.
- Use clickbait (content whose primary purpose is to attract visitors and encourage them to click on links while not delivering values).
- Prolific link exchanges.
Some commonly used gray hat SEO techniques are:
- Cloaking
- Duplicate Content
- Purchasing Old Domains
- Link Buying
- Social Media Automation
Gray Hat SEO Techniques
- Link Exchange
- Buying Expired Domain/Domain Grabbing
- carefully Keyword Stuffing
- Web 2.0 for Building links
- Start Using Social Bookmarking Sites
- Web Directory Submission
- Multiple Social Media Accounts
- Build Microsites
- Add Length to Your Content
- Usage of PBN
1. Link Exchange
2. Buying Expired Domain/Domain Grabbing
3. careful Keyword Stuffing
4. Web 2.0 for Building links
5. Start Using Social Bookmarking Sites
6. Web Directory Submission
7. Multiple Social Media Accounts
8. Build Microsites
9. Add Length to Your Content
10. Usage of PBN
Gray Hat SEO vs Black Hat SEO
Black Hat SEO Techniques:
- Private blog networks
- Link exchanges
- High volume, low-quality directory, and social bookmarking submissions
- Unnatural links in general
- Spam comments
- Article spinning
- Cloaking
- Keyword stuffing
Gray Hat SEO vs White Hat SEO
White Hat SEO Techniques:
- Content marketing
- Relationship building
- Helpful participation in industry blogs & forums
- Social media promotion
- This is what our link-building services focus on