Grey Hat SEO: Does It Really Improve Your Website’s Rankings?

You might have heard of black hat SEO and white hat SEO if you own a website or are familiar with this industry. White hat SEO involves SEO techniques that adhere to Google’s guidelines and are considered good by search engines. On the other hand, black hat SEO involves techniques that are against Google’s guidelines and are used to manipulate search engines. But what is grey hat SEO? As the color ‘grey’ is made by mixing black and white colors, Grey hat SEO is also a mix of White and Black hat SEO techniques. For more detailed information on grey hat SEO and its significance, continue reading:

What is Grey Hat SEO?

Grey hat SEO refers to SEO techniques that are neither explicitly against Google’s guidelines nor honest with Google’s algorithm. They might improve a website’s search engine rankings but also carry a risk of getting your site penalized by Google. In short, grey hat SEO refers to the area somewhere between white hat SEO and black hat SEO. It’s riskier than white hat SEO, but not as harmful as black-hat SEO.

For example, Google encourages backlinking, but buying links is a black hat technique. In order to get backlinks from a website, you generally contact them via their contact form or other contact information available on their site. But as per Google’s guidelines, the backlink should be organic or you should reach out to the website owners through Google Search Console. Even if you are not buying backlinks but requesting them in return for a guest post or something, it may be considered a grey-hat SEO technique.

Some other common examples of grey hat SEO are careful keyword stuffing, buying expired domains, commencing on blogs of other websites to get backlinks, link exchange, paying for reviews, etc. Although these strategies are not recommended by Google, they might result in short-term boosts in rankings if performed carefully.

Is Grey Hat SEO Effective For Your Site’s Rankings?

Moderation is the key to success in SEO. When it comes to using Grey hat SEO techniques, make sure that there is more white in your grey. While grey hat SEO techniques are not strictly forbidden by Google, they might still lie outside Google’s guidelines and result in negative consequences like penalties from Google. Even if you are using such techniques, make sure that you are aware of the risks and only use tactics that are somewhat acceptable.

Google is continuously improving its algorithms to prioritize websites that create high-quality content and focus on user experience. If your website gets caught using such grey hat techniques, your website may get penalized and face massive drops in rankings. Grey hat SEO techniques may negatively affect the user experience of your website.

For example, keyword stuffing makes your content difficult to read, building backlinks from poor quality sites can impact your site’s authoritativeness, and so on. Therefore, even if you are using grey hat SEO techniques, be careful and try to minimize the negative impact on user experience. However, if you want to establish a long-term brand and build trust with search engines, it is recommended to stick to white hat SEO techniques. They might be slow, but will only effect your website in a positive manner.

Some Common Grey Hat SEO Techniques

The following are some most widely used grey hat SEO techniques that might result in improved rankings, but also come with slight risks:

1. Buying Expired Domains

This is one of the most common grey SEO tactics that website owners use to build the authority of their website. It is also known as domain grabbing. Buying an expired domain with high authority and linking it back to your web page will improve the authoritativeness of your website, eventually boosting its search rankings. But buying a lot of expired domains is not a good idea. If you are planning to use this tactic, make sure that you only buy highly relevant domains with high authority. Here are a few things to check before buying an expired domain:

• Check the DA (domain authority) of the expired domain. It is a score between 1 and 100, and any score above 30 is considered good.
• Avoid expired domains with messy backlink profiles.
• Find domains that are at least 3 years old and are relevant to your website.

2. Careful Keyword Stuffing

While keyword stuffing is a black hat SEO technique, using keywords multiple times but at relevant places can be considered grey hat SEO. This is usually done to ensure perfect keyword density (1% to 2%) is a web page. To be on the safer side and avoid getting caught by search engines, you can consider incorporating 0.5% of the content. When incorporating exact keywords to improve search engine rankings, try to add them to your content in such a way that they do not make the content difficult to understand.

Adding the primary keyword at prominent places like title tag, meta description, H1, URLs, and image Alt text, etc, lies under white hat SEO. And using these keywords again and again to trick search engines can be considered black hat SEO. The best thing you can do is avoid excess keyword stuffing and only incorporate keywords where they seem relevant.

3. Improving Content Length

Many website owners might not know but the length of their blogs or web pages’ content also matters. Even if you have added all the relevant and valuable information in a 1,000-word blog, your competitors’ blogs with similar information might rank higher if it has a higher word count. This is not explicitly a black hat SEO technique, but neither a white hat one. Although Google recommends writing high-quality and helpful content, it doesn’t necessarily mean that you have to add more length to your blog. So, adding length to your blog is not within Google’s guidelines but it doesn’t break any rule of Google’s algorithm.

If you think this is a potential reason why your web pages are not ranking on SERPs, you can start by adding content to your top-ranking pages. Use Google Analytics to find top-performing pages and add more content to them. But make sure that you add relevant content. The information should not look repetitive, otherwise, it may hamper user experience.

4. Commenting on Blogs to Achieve Backlinks

While ‘blog comment spam’ is considered a black hat SEO technique, if done carefully, it may lie under grey hat SEO. Instead of randomly commenting on your blog link on any website’s blog, you can find sites that are relevant to your web pages. Look for blogs that you can somehow relate to your website content and request the website owner to link to your website. You can instead comment on some reliable tips, suggestions, or interesting information, and add a link to your web page at the end of your comment. This way, you can try not to get reported spam as the website owner and earn high-quality relevant backlinks.

What To Use: White, Black, or Grey Hat SEO? Tips From MadHawks’ SEO Experts

The first thing to note here is that you should strictly avoid using black hat SEO techniques that overlook user experience and completely focus on manipulating search engines. While white hat SEO is the best to build long-term trust with search engines and establish the website’s authority, you can consider using grey hat SEO techniques for quick results. But do this only if you can ensure that the user experience of your website doesn’t get hampered.

For example, buying backlinks is not recommended by Google, but buying relevant expired domains (but not too many) with high authority and linking them back to your web pages can help improve your search rankings. However, for minimal risk and establishing a long-term brand, it is always best to stick to white hat SEO tactics. If you need any assistance with creating a well-planned SEO strategy that works for your business, contact MadHawks today!

FAQs

1. What optimization techniques does Gray Hat SEO use?

Ans. Some common techniques used in Grey hat SEO include careful keyword stuffing, buying expired domains, improving content length, link exchange, commenting on blogs to earn backlinks, etc.

2. How many types of hats are there in SEO?

Ans. SEO techniques can be categorized into three types, including white hat SEO, black hat SEO, and grey hat SEO. 

3. Why Does Gray Hat SEO Matter?

Ans. Understanding grey hat SEO is important as it may help you improve your website rankings without any negative consequences or penalties.

4. What is grey hat link building?

Ans. Grey hat link building refers to buying or building backlinks non-organically in such a way that your website is not caught by search engines.

5. Is gray-hat SEO important?

Ans. Grey-hat SEO may be effective in achieving short-term ranking goals for a website, but to establish long-term brand trust and authoritativeness, it is advised to stick to white-hat SEO strategies.