Definition

Grey hat SEO is a search engine optimization (SEO) technique that straddles the line between legal and ethically acceptable practices (white hat SEO) and clearly unethical or illegal practices (black hat SEO).

Description

Grey hat SEO techniques focus on tactics that are not directly prohibited by search algorithms, but may be considered controversial, risky or manipulative. These techniques may bring short-term benefits in search rankings, but are risky in the long run. Intervention by search engines such as Google may lead to a website being removed from search results altogether in the future (deindexing).

Grey hat SEO techniques include:

  • Buying backlinks: If you choose to pay for other sites to link to you (and so increase your search engine rankings), you are in violation of Google’s Webmaster Guidelines.
  • Keyword stuffing: This is mentioning one word too often within, for example, one article. It is already considered by some to be a black hat SEO industry.
  • Negative SEO: It is characterized by deliberately sabotaging competitor sites by creating broken or spammy backlinks, duplicating content, creating (false) negative reviews.
  • Cloaking: This is a technique in which a website displays different content for search engines and different content for ordinary users in order to manipulate search engine algorithms so that the site gets better positions in the results.
  • Auto-generated content: this technique is often used to quickly and cheaply populate web pages with large amounts of text, especially to improve search results.
  • Creating satellite sites: Satellite sites or PBNs (Private Blog Networks) are a series of sites created for the sole purpose of building links to the main site, thereby artificially increasing its authority and search rankings.
  • Buying expired domains: This is a popular gray hat SEO technique that focuses on buying domains with higher authority and acquired backlinks. These domains are then redirected to your site or used to further create content targeting relevant keywords.