It’s 2021; everyone is online 24/7 to find some content. We all want our websites to rank first in organic search. Ranking high on search engines can be challenging.
Quality content and the right keywords are enough to rank your website on search engines in the past. Following Google’s guidelines and rules might take several months to achieve the desired results.
Grey hat SEO techniques, and this article, can be used to boost traffic and rank that white hat search engine optimization might not have.
You are on the right page and have found 7 Grey Hat SEO methods to improve your website’s ranking.
You’ve probably heard of white hat, black hat, and grey hat SEO if you’ve been involved in SEO for a while. There are many types of SEO. While the white hat is the best, the black hat is the worst, and the grey hat is ugly.
Grey hat search engine optimization is a blurred line between black and white hats. To improve your website’s ranking, you must first understand the differences between grey and black hat SEO.
Black, Grey, and White Hat SEO
Implementing the proper practices is critical to successful SEO. Google has obvious Webmaster Guidelines. Follow them to avoid your page being removed from Google searches. Google has a lot of power in your business. You cannot afford to make it difficult for them.
White hat SEO is the practice of following search engine policies and rules. Sites want to link through content that is so high quality there’s no keyword stuffing and no hidden text. There are no doorways pages. White hat-rich SEO websites have the following key features:
- Optimized content of high quality.
- Meta tags should be used in the right way
- Meta tags and descriptive keywords.
- Page loading speed and responsiveness
It’s easier to be noticed in a competitive market if you use white-hat SEO techniques. Although it can guarantee long-term organic traffic growth and linkback growth, it is only sometimes noticeable.
Black hat SEO is the deliberate use of tactics and practices against the search engine’s terms and conditions to manipulate search engine results and rank higher. This could result in search engines removing the site from its results pages or affiliate sites.
Black Hat SEO Tips:
- Spammy links
- Keyword stuffing.
- Clothes
- Pages with duplicate content, domains, and subdomains
- Redirecting
Although these practices may give you faster results, they are not organic and can only be used for a short time. These are temporary solutions. Google will be able to find them and penalize your websites. The worst-case scenario is manual penalties. These apply to the domain and can permanently remove your website from search engines.
Grey hat SEO is, as its name implies, somewhere between white hat and black hat because their techniques are ambiguous (as well as black hat). Terms and services that they use do not comply with search engine terms and conditions. However, grey hat SEO techniques do not conform to Google’s guidelines; they can still be accepted.
Why is Grey Hat SEO Important?
Companies require immediate results. They need more time and patience to wait for organic traffic and ranking. This is why SEO professionals use tactics that don’t align with Google’s algorithm or violate webmaster guidelines.
Grey hat SEO can have negative consequences on your site’s ranking. It can also cost your site thousands. You should be updated about the most recent categorizations as grey hat SEO is constantly changing. What’s grey today could become white or black tomorrow.
Grey Hat SEO:
- Review payments
- Spun content.
- Clickbait is content that aims to attract visitors to your site and encourage them to click on the links. It does not deliver any value.
- Exchanges of valuable links.
Are you willing to do a deep dive?
Let’s learn 7 Grey Hat SEO Strategies to Boost Your Website Ranking.
1) Domain Grabbing / Buying an Expired Domain:
This is one of the most popular grey hat SEO strategies to improve your website’s ranking. Domain grabbing is the act of buying an expired domain. This will increase your website’s SEO. It will increase your website rank if you purchase an expired domain with good authority that can be linked to your website or blog.
It’s not a good idea to purchase many expired domains to improve your website’s SEO. However, buying a high-quality backlink profile domain now and again for search engines such as Google will help boost your website. This is the best grey-hat SEO technique to improve your website’s ranking.
What are the Most Important Things to Remember When Buying an Expired Domain?
- Domain Authority: DA is a search engine ranking that Moz developed. It predicts the likelihood of a website being indexed in search engine result pages. A website’s DA score can range from 1 to 100. Anything above 30 is considered good.
- Domains at least three years old: An environment older than three years will have a more significant impact than recently purchased and expired domains.
- Avoid toxic link-built domains: To get a high SEO value domain, you should avoid domains with harmful backlink anchor text that contain foreign languages such as Chinese and Russian. These domains could be better for your website’s SEO.
- Clean Backlink Profil: An expired domain may have a backlink profile that is not clean or relevant. Save your time buying parts that are already expired. They will need to be in the proper context for you. Use tools like Semrush, Ahrefs, etc.
- 301 redirect: After you have purchased expired domains, it is time to redirect them to your primary website. A 301 redirect is when a page moves permanently to another location, such as a website.
It allows search engines like Google to direct users to new page location pages and passes 90% of the link juice. This is great for purchasing expired domains that can be used to improve your website’s SEO.
2) Careful Keyword Stuffing:
Keyword stuffing could be better SEO and should be avoided. However, keyword stuffing with high keyword density can give the best results and increase traffic to your site. This is one of the best grey hat SEO techniques for improving your website’s ranking.
What is the perfect keyword density? Keyword density refers to the percentage of time that a keyword should appear on a webpage. A good keyword density is 1%. This means that your keyword should appear 10x in a 1000-word article. To be safe, 0.5% keyword density is better and doesn’t alarm search engines.
Where should we insert the primary keywords to optimize the SEO?
It is important to position your primary keyword correctly for the best organic ranking. These are the places you should place your keyword:
- Title tags
- H2 and H3 tags
- Image alt tags
- URLs
- Content beginning and ending
3) Add length to your content:
Try writing 2000 words articles if you’re in a competitive niche. It works great with search engines because it is longer and more valuable than short articles.
The Long-Form Advantage of Content:
- Attract more backlinks
- Bloggers reach out for content promotion
- Increased social share for longer articles
- Noticeable growth in search engine traffic.
First, choose a niche that will attract loyal readers to increase the length of your content. You can improve your average content length by focusing on the top 10 posts that attract traffic.
Google Analytics will help you find the top post and work on the content length. Update that post with keywords, images, and other information to increase traffic.
Long-form content requires a lot of research and a good outline. Use many subheadings, H2 tags, and H3 tags to expand your article. These essential grey-hat SEO techniques will help you improve your website’s ranking. Content is the most important thing.
4) HTML 2.0 for Building Links:
Web 1.0 was static pages. Users could not modify or take control of pages. Web 2.0 is a grey hat SEO technique to improve your website. Users can edit, tweak and create content through web 2.0 forums, directories, and submission websites.
Web 2.0 can be used on dynamic pages where users can modify the content. For Example, Wikipedia comes under web 2.0. You can correct any errors or omissions on a page. Web 2.0 is user-generated content. It has the following advantages.
Quality traffic: User-generated visitors send qualified visitors to your website, increasing website traffic and conversion rates. Spend quality time on sites with more users, such as Quora.
Link benefits: Web 2.0 can be used to build links. Web 2.0 does not generate do-follow links. However, it is necessary to have various links to create backlinks profiles. There needs to be more than just a do-follow link. A few web 2.0 sites and blog directories offer do-follow links, which is excellent for website SEO and ranking.
Web 2.0 is more effective when you focus on user engagement and not just website traffic. Keep active on social media sites like Quora and Medium.
5) Social Bookmarking Websites:
Signing to social bookmarking sites is another excellent grey-hat SEO technique that boosts your website rank. However, you should limit your submissions to one or two of your website links from the latest or oldest post.
If you only submit one post to all social bookmarking sites, it won’t affect your website ranking but will increase your website traffic. You can submit your blog post to most social bookmarking websites.
The Most Popular Social Bookmarking Sites Are:
- Digg
- Inbound
- Folkd
- Scoop. it
Promoting content on social bookmarking websites is a common mistake. They often use the same meta description and heading.
Using the same meta description and headings as Google may penalize you. While promoting on social bookmarking websites, create a unique title.
6) Link Exchange
Link exchange falls under the black-hat SEO category. However, this is not true. While automatic link exchange is black hat SEO, manually exchanging links falls under a grey hat.
What’s Link Exchange?
Link exchange is the act of exchanging links with blogs or websites. Google will only penalize people who follow proper SEO practices. Link exchanges can create backlinks from different sources if done correctly.
How to exchange links without getting noticed by Google?
- Connect with a few bloggers in your niche to share their content. You can even create a Facebook group and start liking, commenting, and appreciating the range of others relevant to your audience.
- Link to other websites in your content. You can also reach out via email or social media. Tell them that you are linking them and ask for a retweet. If they find your content valuable, they will reach out to you to link back.
7) Multiple social media accounts:
We spend a lot of time on social media. We find many articles and images depending on our interests. Their algorithm uses our search history.
Why not leverage social media sites for your benefit? According to search metrics, social signals can impact your website’s SEO. Using grey-hat SEO techniques to improve your website ranking is beneficial, as social media is widely used. How can you take advantage of social signals?
You will need multiple dummy accounts to increase your Facebook shares and likes, tweet retweets, and other social media engagements. It falls under grey hat search engine optimization. White hat SEO applies to content that is getting shares and likes automatically. However, grey hat SEO is for content you intentionally use to increase social share, such as buying Facebook likes or multiple accounts.
If you want to be something other than an expert in your field, then you should not use this method. People will soon find out that you are faking your social media presence.
You might ask yourself, “Should I use grey hat SEO techniques to improve my website’s ranking?” It doesn’t matter if you wear a grey, black, or white hat. There is always a risk.
You run the risk that white hat tactics will not work for your website traffic and ranking. Black-hat techniques can be subject to manual action. Search engines may remove a website from search engine indexes if it violates these guidelines.
Grey hats aren’t illegal. It would be best if you weighed the risks and rewards. The internet is not a place where everyone follows the rules. Your competitor might use black hat tactics. It would be best if you had a few tricks to outrank them and gain valuable traffic.
You lose little by being on Google’s side. With Google’s algorithm becoming more challenging daily, white hat SEO is the best way to ensure your business’s safety. Play safe.
