Black vs White Hat Motorcycle SEO

You’ve probably heard of the terms black hat and white hat relating to different search engine optimization (SEO) approaches. Here’s the bottom line early – black hat SEO techniques will hurt or destroy your motorcycle website’s rankings. Below is more info on black hat vs white hat motorcycle SEO and your site

So, where did these SEO terms originate? They originate from the classic Western movies, where the villain typically wore a black hat and the hero wore a white hat. The same applies to black-and-white hat website SEO strategies and techniques. Below is a quick overview of the differences between these two approaches for marketing companies.

What is Black Hat SEO?

The black hat optimization approach uses techniques to try to improve a site’s rankings that do not follow Google’s SEO recommendations. It also tries to manipulate rankings by using deceptive techniques to get quick improvements in rankings. This unethical SEO approach focuses on search engines rather than the end-user.

When Google discovers that you use black hat tactics, and they will, your site will drop significantly in rankings, or it could fall entirely off search engine results pages (SERPs). Or your motorcycle website can be removed from Google’s index completely! Notably, penalties can happen to your site when there is a Google algorithm change or a manual action. Either way, black hat techniques can damage or destroy your biker business.

What Is White Hat SEO?

The white hat SEO approach follows Google’s search engine optimization guidelines to improve rankings. It also focuses first on your target audience rather than rankings. Notably, you need to create content for new and current customers. This approach does not try to increase rankings quickly by using tricks. Subsequently, it takes more work and time to get results, but the improvement in rankings lasts for a longer time.

What Is Gray Hat SEO?

In between black hat and white hat SEO techniques is gray hat SEO. Gray Hat uses iffy search optimization techniques. Granted, they are not specifically against Google’s search recommendation. But they are questionable.

As with past algorithm changes, Google eventually bans many of these questionable techniques. So, these gray hat tactics can also penalize your motorcycle website or remove it from its index.

Black Hat SEO Techniques List

There are a lot of black hat tactics, but below are some of the most common:

• Keyword stuffing is when your site has a bunch of keywords/keyphrases in your content or code.
• Duplicate content includes duplicate content on your site or plagiarized content from other sites.
• Hidden text
• Low-quality content
• Artificial intelligence writers or other auto-generated content – “Using automation – including AI – to generate content primarily to manipulate ranking in search results violates our spam policies. If your content is useful, helpful, and high quality, it doesn’t matter if a machine wrote it or a human.” (Google’s Search, 2023)
• Link farms
• Paid links
• Doorway pages – These pages are specifically written to come up in search rankings for one or a few keywords, but they bring little or no value to the end user.
• Cloaking – This black hat SEO technique presents one version of your site to the end-user and another to Google.
• URL redirect tricks
• Bait and switch pages – This tactic is where a page has a lot of links relating to one topic to rank, but then the content is swapped out.
• Buying reviews or having employees create numerous reviews.
• Spamming in blog comments
• Spamming from social media pages with numerous links is another black hat technique.
• Private blog networks (PBN) – This black hat SEO tactic is where several authoritative biker sites link to your site to increase rankings, not because of quality content.
• Article spinning – This is where your motorcycle site has more than one page with the same content. The difference in the website content is that it is just reworked content with synonyms.
• Automated Google queries
• Manipulating the structured data/rich snippets
• Alt tag keywords spamming
• Blogging spam
• Malicious pages are any pages that are designed to harm by using malware.
• Hacked pages – Unfortunately, all motorcycle sites can be hacked. And the hacker can create a page that your owner, website developer, or website designer doesn’t know exists. Notably, there are many ways to avoid hacking, such as following online security tips.
• Mirror sites
• Cyber-squatting or domain squatting is when a black hat SEO buys domains similar to larger or popular websites to mislead end-users for financial gain.
• Submitting negative SEO reports to Google to get a competitor penalized will get your site penalized when Google finds out.
• Since engagement is a Google ranking factor, your content must be excellent. And you will find that a marketing person that riders create more engaging content than passengers. Also, the more a marketer knows the history of the motorcycle world, the more engaging your website’s content will be. 

Another Black Hat SEO Problem

Submitting negative SEO reports to Google to penalize a competitor will result in your site being penalized when Google finds out. Plus, visitors recognize the quality of your motorcycle site’s page content, whether good or bad. Schemes used to increase website traffic result in low conversion and high bounce rates. You must use white hat SEO practices if you want your motorcycle website to perform well in the long term.

Lastly, if you want to learn more about marketing in the motorcycle world, check out our Marketing Academy. Also, more informational pages are linked to our motorcycle internet & search engine services pages.