Summary: Nothing is better than achieving a rank on Google. It is a result that the business is running up to the mark and to make this work, one must have a clear idea about grey hat SEO.
As the name suggests ‘Grey hat’, is the same. Grey hat SEO is the combination of ‘Black hat SEO’ and ‘White hat SEO’, that helps to improve search engine ranking and visibility for a definite website. The concept is vast and that is what we will be explaining in-depth in the following paragraphs. Enterprises, be they small or big, desire to have a good ranking on search engines. However, the easier it looks while reading, in reality, the practical implementation is equally tedious. Ranking on SERPs or search engine result pages is notably challenging.
Technology has taken a giant leap which has created positive impacts on the entire world. With said that, a business must know what happened in the past decades because without knowing so, you will not understand what has changed today’s global scenario. Earlier, there was a time when ranking on search engines was easier. With the use of quality content and long tail keywords, businesses could easily make their presence on the internet domain. As mentioned before, the time has changed and today almost all sorts of businesses have an online presence. Now the curve of competition has also a new set of requirements altogether. It is about shouting out the products and services of the business while shining out bright among the plethora of clouds and for doing that SEO or search engine optimization is the one-stop solution. The process becomes swifter with the combination of various strategic approaches, namely – grey hat SEO, white hat SEO, and black hat SEO. These are like a branch in the sea that will save a business from drowning in the sea of fierce market competition.
Nonetheless among the three, Grey hat SEO has earned the most popularity because of its specialties and its tailored techniques that aid a brand to rank at the top. So, before diving down into its importance, its array of techniques, and other details, let us start from the basics of what exactly is Grey hat SEO.
A hybrid of white hat and black hat SEO is known as grey hat SEO. Grey hat SEO poses a greater danger than white hat SEO because it circumvents search engine policies to boost a page’s rankings on SERPs. Grey hat SEO tactics are dark that appear to be white.
That is the fundamental explanation of grey hat SEO. After having read this, it is not unlikely to think of whether Grey hat SEO matters or not? Well, precisely it does, beyond any doubt.
Grey hat SEO should be understood properly because it has the potential to boost your site’s position without having any negative effects or to cost you thousands of dollars in global lost traffic. The guidelines and best practices set forth by Google have the power to forbid brilliant innovation and unconventional thinking. The interests of search marketers or even the searchers themselves are not necessarily served by this ban. Gray Hat SEO also undergoes periodic classification revisions. Before one year, it was named a Black hat, and the following year it evolved with the term White hat SEO which is vital for search marketers to stay up to date on the most recent classifications.
Now that the basics are discovered, let us move to the next segment of the various techniques used by Grey hat SEO.
This is one of the leading Grey hat SEO techniques that hover between Black hat SEO and White hat SEO. Purchasing older or used domains means that those sets of domains were left unused or were on the verge of their expiry date. However, the domain does have some value but due to the quantity and quality of backlinks, they might not have worked properly.
One can seamlessly apply Grey hat SEO tactics on expired domains with two techniques:
It is bad search engine optimization techniques to recklessly stuff your keywords into your content and expect improved results. SEO suffers when keywords are stuffed. Instead, practice carefully inserting keywords into your content. Careful keyword stuffing involves using the appropriate keywords and their precise densities to obtain unmatched page rankings.
Carefully selecting keywords can increase the website’s organic traffic and provide them with the recognition it previously lacked. The frequency with which a certain term should occur in your text is directly related to keyword density.
A maximum of the population is glued to digital screens. For this reason, they prefer to look for businesses, services, and products online. However, this proportion of the public will only get to know your business when the brand’s name is promoted properly on social media. Social media platforms are powerful Grey hat techniques that can spread a business name in the blink of an eye. When there is one social media page for a business, it comes under the category of White hat SEO. On the other hand, when organizations utilize multiple social media pages, it is a practice of Grey hat SEO.
Positive reviews are believed to elevate a website’s ranking in search engines. This is especially true for local SEO. Typically, people find ways to manipulate search engines’ algorithms by bribing people to provide favorable reviews of listings. Numerous businesses and organizations offer positive ratings in exchange for a little discount, incentive, or cash payment. This is unequivocally Grey hat SEO.
When the notion is about pushing a website on Google ranking, spinning content is the king. Nonetheless, it is paramount to keep notice that content spinning is an unethical practice for working domains. It is a process of creating a replica of existing content from the web. The term spinning means taking each word and replacing it with a similar word that does not get detected in the plagiarism checker. Hence, the information created is spared from copyright issues. A strategic Grey hat SEO process, which when done correctly, ensure ensures the website ranks at the top.
A private blog network, or PBN, was originally a deliberate link-building technique. According to its definition, a PBN is a discrete collection of websites that you can visit to create backlinks to a specific website to raise its Google rating. Attacking a link to a single central domain is an effort to move as much link equity as possible, especially for factors for increasing its authority, which is the main goal of PBN for grey hat SEO methods. There are two main ways to use PBN for SEO and backlinks:
Web directory submission is the most used Grey hat SEO technique. A traditional strategic approach that when applied can simultaneously generate a free backlink to your website. Nonetheless, when the same process is performed but in smaller proportions or numbers, it turns out to be a White hat SEO practice. On the other hand, when this technique is overused to create multiple backlinks to the business website, it is termed a Grey hat SEO practice.
Content automation is the technique of using a particular piece of software to automate the procedure typically needed for producing content. In a word, the main goal of the same is to produce a steady stream of material to increase your chances of improving your rank on Google and generating crucial traffic at the same time. Artificial intelligence or content scraping can both be used to accomplish this technique.
By creating a microsite or blog, you can increase your search engine ranks without risking a penalty.
It resembles a PBN in some ways, but because you don’t own the domains being used to connect back to your site, it is considerably safer. They are not a private network; they are public. Some of the common examples of creating microsites for SEO purposes involve channelizing blogs on multiple domains like web 2.0 sites and other content curation platforms which has a notable high rise in domain authority. To name some – Weebly, Blogger, Tumblr, Live Journal, Medium, and many more.
An SEO tactic called cloaking shows search engines one set of URLs or information while showing human users another.
Cloaking is a sneaky grey hat SEO technique that deceives search engines like Google to give users unexpected results while obtaining the desired ranks for target keywords.
You do not get much by naming your website on the bad side of Google. Google always validates what is right without a doubt. So, it is always safe to go with White hat SEO. However, if you want to rank higher at a faster pace, Grey hat SEO is your solution.
As you now know, grey hat (also known as gray hat SEO) is a search engine optimization technique that blends black hat and white hat SEO to raise a website’s exposure and search engine ranks.
Grey hat SEO tactics are essentially just black hat SEO approaches that are disguised as white. However, many website owners use these black hat SEO techniques to increase traffic to their websites, therefore it’s important to comprehend how they operate online. Connect with our expert team to get industry advice on ranking at the top.
