What Is Grey Hat SEO?
Grey black hat SEO can be described as an SEO practice that blends black and white hat SEO. Grey hat SEO is more risky that white hat SEO as it utilises rules of search engines to improve the rank of a website on SERPs. Grey hat SEO strategies are black disguised as white.
This is the basic definition of gray hat SEO. We’ll now look at the top well-known grey-hat search engine optimization techniques currently used.
Grey Hat SEO Techniques
1. Using Expired Domains
This is a standard grey black SEO strategy that is borderline between white and black SEO.
It is the process of buying an existing domain that the owner has allowed to expire, yet has some authority due to the quantity and the quality of links that link to the site.
Gray hat SEO methods that uses domains that are expired can be utilized to two different ways
Use a 301 redirect in order to redirect all link’s authority to the current domain in order to increase the authority of your site.
Go to a website like Wayback Machine, finding archives of old content and then republishing the content on the site in order to revive it in the same way it was prior to the time that the domain expires. This will result in a website that immediately becomes successful with targeted visitors.
2. Buying or Trading Links
Links purchased for trading and buying are the 2nd most used SEO strategies that webmasters employ to improve the authority and rank of their sites.
But link schemes like this are technically considered to be black hat SEO strategies since they are in violation of the Google’s Webmaster guidelines.
This SEO technique, which is a gray-hat method can be found in four main types:
Purchase a link position on an article already included by Google.
Purchase a guest post that includes a backlink to your site.
Link exchange with a different owner of a site (i.e. that I hyperlink to you, and my link is to).
The exchange of a service or product in exchange for a hyperlink to a website.
3. Using Private Blog Networks (PBN)
The private blog network (PBN) refers to a collection of websites you manage that is used to construct backlinks to one website in order to increase its rank on Google.
The goal of PBNs for PBN for SEO that is gray-hat goals is to connect to a single domain in order to transfer the highest amount of link equity to it in order to increase its credibility.
PBN backlinks can be an SEO technique that is considered black hat However, if you keep the backlinks completely private without being aware of the practice, and then hide your tracks to ensure that Google does not know that you control all the sites This technique is considered to belong in gray-hat SEO.
4. Building Micro-Sites and Blogs
The creation of a micro-site, (blog) is one grey method of SEO that could boost your search engine rankings without penalizing you.
It’s similar to an PBN however it’s more secure because you don’t control the domains you use for linking back to your website. It’s also a public network and not a private one.
The most common examples of creating micro-sites with SEO goals include the creation of a blog on several websites 2.0 as well as content curation websites that have high domain authority, like Medium, Weebly, Blogger, Tumblr, Live Journal and many more.
Read my post on SEO for a blog to find strategies for optimizing blog posts.
5. Spinning Content
Spinning content is a popular method of SEO which can help you get listed on Google. However, it’s not ethical and is not a wise method to use for in the long run.
Here’s how it works:
Spinning content refers to when you copy material from another site and then modify it in a sentence-by-sentence manner so that it cannot be identified by software that detects plagiarism.
After you have spun the content and published, you can publish it to your own website to ensure it is listed for the keywords you wish to target. The process of spinning content can help you avoid any potential penalty for duplicate content which we’ll talk about later.
6. Creating Duplicate Content
Duplicate content is yet another grey SEO technique that’s being employed in the realm of SEO in the present.
This method involves copying and pasting large chunks of content on the same site or across different domains.
Three ways in which duplicate content can be used in SEO:
To target similar searches without having to create new content. Most commonly, this is done using local SEO keywords, where several pages are created for each city. Each page contains duplicate content, with the exception that the name of the city is changed to match the city that is targeted. This will enable the page that is targeted to rank for the targeted keyword, while the rest get buried.
Copying content from other websites and then posting it to an authoritative domain may outrank the original site that originally posted the content, so that the targeted website could be able to steal traffic.
Duplicate content is a way to flood search engines with duplicates of the same content hoping that one will be able to stick and rank highly for the keywords you want to rank for.
7. Automating Content
Automating content happens when you make use of software to automatize the manual process involved for content creation. The aim is to supply the blog you run with a regular flow of content, so that you are more likely to be ranked higher on Google and also to increase visitors.
Automation of content is accomplished in two methods:
Scraping pages from other websites and then combining the pages on your website. Aritlce spinning is also used to make the page distinct and unrecognisable for plaigairism.
With the help of Artificial Intelligence (AI) as well as machine-learning, you can automate the writing of the content for your website. AI tools for creating content use naturally-generated language (NLG) to create the content with no human intervention.
8. Increase Keyword Density by hiding Text
Utilizing hidden text is a black-hat SEO technique that is in violation of the Google’s Webmaster guidelines. However gray black SEO is a way to circumvent these guidelines by concealing keywords from users yet allowing the crawling of these keywords by search engines.
The most popular SEO methods that use gray hats to conceal text are:
Finding text hidden behind an image.
Utilizing CSS to move the text away from the screen.
The font size should be set to zero.
9. Cloaking
Cloaking is an SEO technique that provides the same set of URLs or contents to users of the internet and another that is geared towards search engines.
Cloaking is a deceitful SEO technique that enables search engines such as Google to achieve desired results for the keywords you want to rank and give users results that are different that they would expect.
10. Submitting Your Site to Web Directories
The most frequently used techniques for SEO that is grey-hat is web directory submissions.
The addition of your website directories to the directory will give you a no-cost backlink for your website If used in small amounts this is regarded as an untrue SEO technique.
However, once you begin to use this method to create hundreds or tens of links to your website It can tip into grey hat SEO territory. Particularly, if you modify the anchor text of your keyword to create the backlink.
11. Creating Multiple Social Media Accounts
The use of a single account on social media for your company on every social media network is a SEO technique for sharing links and gaining publicity for content.
But, if you establish multiple accounts on social media to artificially boost the share and linking back to your website is a gray SEO tactic.
12. Paying for Positive Reviews
Google is well-known for rewarding websites that have more prominent rankings, which have favorable reviews. This is particularly true for local SEO.
One method to sway the algorithm to favor your side is to get users to leave a positive review of your site. You can locate an online service provider to provide positive reviews or get clients to rate your website for an incentive or discount.
In any case, it’s grey SEO with a hat all the way.
Is Grey Hat SEO Illegal?
Grey-hat SEO isn’t illegal. There isn’t a law that has been infringed by these methods. However grey SEO is not legal. SEO is in violation of the search engine’s prohibited practices and could cause your website to be removed from search results pages.
Grey Hat SEO vs Black Hat SEO
The distinction in grey-hat SEO and black SEO is that grey SEO employs techniques that aren’t always completely in line with the guidelines of search engines. This gray area of SEO is the reason why grey hat SEO is more appealing over black hat SEO strategies.
Grey Hat SEO vs White Hat SEO
The main difference of grey hat SEO and white hat search engine optimization is grey hat SEO can be more risky than white hat SEO. Grey hat search engine optimization strategy could or might not result in your website banned from search engines and affiliate websites. White-hat SEO is 100 100% safe.
Grey Hat SEO Summary
I hope you enjoy this post on gray hat SEO.
As you have seen, gray hat (also called gray SEO or gray) is an SEO strategy which combines white hat with black hat SEO in order to increase the search engine ranking and accessibility for websites.
In a lot of ways, gray techniques for SEO are techniques for black hat SEO that appear white. In reality, lots of webmasters take part in these gray-hat SEO strategies to increase website traffic It is important to know how these strategies are used online.
