Gray Hat SEO: Definition, Risks, and Its Practices

Gray hat is one of the most frequently used SEO techniques and strategies to increase website ranking and visibility. This technique can help the website gain profits in the short term.

Even though it may sound interesting, using gray hat SEO is quite risky as it can harm your website in the long run.

Then, what are the risks of gray hat SEO that can hinder business growth and website performance?

Before knowing the risks, first understand what it means to practice this strategy in the following guide.

What is Gray Hat SEO?

Gray hat SEO is a practice that falls between white hat and black hat techniques. This practice seeks to exploit loopholes in Google's guidelines and policies. Although it does not violate existing regulations, this tactic still has some risks.

Their practices are often used because they can bring high traffic to websites in the short term. Even so, the implementation of this tactic should be updated regularly.

This condition is due to Google's guidelines and policies, which are constantly being updated.

Gray Hat SEO Risks

As previously mentioned, gray hat practices can expose you to some risks when implemented. Here's the explanation:

1. Getting Penalty from Google

This SEO practice seeks to exploit loopholes in Google's system. However, Google maintains algorithms that are regularly updated to identify manipulative and harmful practices.

Therefore, this tactic should be updated regularly. If a violation is found, the website can get a penalty from Google.

Penalties that are usually given by Google are for websites that are not displayed in the top rankings of the SERPs or are removed from the indexing process.

Penalized websites will experience a drastic reduction in organic traffic. This will hinder business growth.

2. Damaging Reputation

Users tend to look for safe websites when searching for information on Google. When users find websites that have security risks, they try to avoid them.

These conditions can damage the reputation and credibility of the website which can lead to negative brand image and affect user trust.

3. Volatility

This tactic relies heavily on existing Google loopholes. This SEO practice can get a lot of traffic when there is a loophole that can be exploited.

However, when Google updates its algorithm, gray hat SEO becomes ineffective and has a negative impact on websites.

This volatility can cause fluctuations in ranking positions on search pages and reduce the consistency of organic traffic.

Gray Hat SEO Practices

There are several gray hat practices that are commonly practiced by SEO practitioners. Here are some frequently used practices:

1. Using Expired Domains

This practice is usually done by buying a domain that has expired but still has strong website authority.

The level of authority can be seen from the number and quality of backlinks that still point to the website.

The backlinks contained in the domain are diverted to the target website in order to increase its authority.

In addition, the content on the domain will be published to bring it back to life as it was before it expired. Such conditions are intended to create a website with targeted traffic.

2. Buying Links

The gray method is often used to increase the authority and ranking of websites on search engines.

This practice is the most popular strategy because it makes it difficult for Google to detect link purchases. However, this practice is sometimes considered black hat SEO by Google.

The practice of buying and selling links usually uses several methods, such as:

• Buying link placements in articles indexed by Google
• Paying for guest posts that include backlinks to websites
• Exchanging links with other websites
• Trading products in exchange for placing links on websites that have strong authority

3. Using PBN

A PBN (private blog network) is a network of websites owned by one or several owners with the aim of directing backlinks to their main website.

The owners usually also buy expired domains or create websites with minimal content to get backlinks.

PBN can provide a lot of link equity to websites, so that a website’s authority and ranking can increase.

However, Google actively fights PBNs and considers them manipulative practices that violate their guidelines and policies.

4. Build a Micro Website

Another gray hat practice is building lots of micro-websites with minimal content to drive backlinks to the main website.

Microsites play a role in increasing the authority of the main website through the links provided.

The way a microsite works is similar to a PBN but much safer because it doesn't require a domain to create backlinks to the main website.

However, like PBNs, Google actively combats this practice.

5. Spinning Content

Spinning content is the practice of changing content from other websites into different versions by using synonyms, replacing words, or changing sentence structure.

This method can be said to be unethical and can only be carried out for a short period of time.

Such a practice aims to create new content quickly and easily without going through a difficult creative process.

Even so, content generated from spinning content is usually of low quality and does not provide added value to users.

6. Creating Duplicate Content

Duplicate content is content copied from other websites. This content has no unique value and can only hurt the user experience.

Instead of increasing authority, this type of content only makes websites worse in the eyes of search engines.

There are several ways to implement this SEO practice. One way is to use local keywords to target specific areas. You only need to replace the location with a specific area name.

Another way you can do this is by copying content from the website. The results of the copy will be published on a website with a strong domain. This practice can keep original content off search pages and steal traffic.

7. Create Automated Content

Automated content generation typically uses software or bots to generate content automatically without human involvement.

However, like duplicate content, the results of automated content generation are of low quality and irrelevant to the topic being discussed.

This SEO practice can be done in two ways. The first way is to take several pieces of content from other websites and combine them into one on the main website.

This method involves spinning content to make it unique and undetectable for plagiarism.

In addition, such content creation can also use AI (artificial intelligence). AI-generated content tends to have a rigid and robotic writing style.

8. Increase Keyword Density With Hidden Text

Keyword density is the percentage of keywords in the content. Ideally, keyword density for main keywords is in the range of 1–2% of all content.

Unfortunately, implementing the ideal keyword density is not an easy job.

These conditions led to the emergence of this "gray" optimization practice. This SEO practice seeks to hide keywords from users but still allows Google to crawl and index them.

Common actions in this practice are hiding the keywords behind the image, using CSS to place the text off-screen, changing its color to match the background color, and setting the font size to 0.

9. Cloaking

Cloaking is an SEO strategy that serves different content or URLs between Google and users. This strategy seeks to manipulate Google by providing different information. The goal is that the website can appear in the top rankings on search pages.

While gray hat SEO can be profitable in the short term, it's not worth the risk. Website sustainability and authority in the long term are much more important than short term profits.

Using a white hat optimization strategy and avoiding gray hat is the right action for business. White hat SEO practices can build a good brand reputation and promote an optimal user experience. This, of course, can have a direct impact on business growth.

SEO services from cmlabs can help you implement a white hat SEO strategy for digital and organic marketing. With the right SEO strategy, your business can grow organically without relying on paid advertising.