7 Grey Hat SEO Techniques to Boost Your Website Ranking

It’s 2021- everyone is online all the time to fetch some of the content from websites. Don’t we all want our website to rank top on organic search? Ranking on search engines isn’t as easy as it used to be. 

Earlier quality content and the right keywords were enough to get your website to rank on search engines. And today, if you will follow Google guidelines and rules, then achieving the desired results might take months. 

This is where Grey hat SEO techniques and this article come in handy to give a boost in traffic and ranking that white hat SEO might lack, with minimum risk of getting spotted by Google search algorithm. 

You have arrived at the right time on the right page to learn 7 Grey Hat SEO techniques to boost your website ranking.

As per Bright Edge report of 2019, 68% of online experiences begin from search engines and 53% of website traffic comes from organic searches only, which makes SEO (Search Engine Optimization) critical for businesses.

If you are into SEO for some time, you have heard about white hat SEO, black hat SEO, and Grey hat SEO. In the world of SEO, there are the good, the bad, and the ugly. Where white hat SEO is the good guy, black hat SEO is the bad guy and grey hat SEO is the ugly one.

Grey hat SEO is the blurred line between white hat SEO and black hat SEO. Before starting grey hat SEO techniques to boost your website ranking, first understand what is white, black, and grey hat SEO.

Learn about the Important and Prospect of SEO in India

White, Black, and Grey Hat SEO

Successful SEO means implementing the right practices. Google has quite clear webmaster guidelines, and if you don’t adhere to those, it might lead your page to hot water. Let’s be clear, Google has a pretty big say in your business, so you cannot afford to upset the algorithm.

White hat SEO means adhering to search engines rules and policies. The content is of outstanding quality that sites want to link through it, no keyword stuffing, no hidden text, and no doorway pages. Key features of white hat rich SEO websites are:

• High-quality optimized content.
• The right use of meta tags.
• Descriptive keywords and meta tags.
• Page loading and responsiveness.

With the competitive market, it’s difficult to stand out purely with white hat SEO techniques. It guarantees long-term growth in terms of organic traffic and linkbacks, but it will take time to be noticeable.

Black hat SEO means intentionally using the tactics and practices that go against the terms of service of search engines to manipulate and rank higher on search engine searches. It may cause search engines to ban the sites from result pages and their affiliate sites.

Learn in-depth SEO and marketing techniques with the Best Digital Marketing Course in India

Tactics used in Black Hat SEO: 

• Spammy links.
• Keyword stuffing.
• Cloaking
• Domain, sub-domain, and pages with duplicate content.
• Redirecting

These practices might give faster results, however, they are inorganic and short-term. These are temporary solutions. Google is certain to pick up on them and penalize your websites. The worst is manual penalties, which apply to the domain and lead to permanent removal from search engines.

Grey hat SEO, as the name suggests, is somewhere between white hat and black hat as their techniques are ambiguous (as black hat) and terms and services do not abide by or go against the terms and services of search engines. Grey hat SEO tactics do not adhere to Google’s guidelines, but can still be acceptable.

Don’t forget to delve into the Top SEO trends to Ace SERP Rankings in 2021

Why does Grey Hat SEO Matter?

Many companies need immediate results. They don’t have time to wait for ranking and organic traffic. In this scenario, SEO professionals apply tactics that are not honest with Google’s algorithm and neither violate webmaster guidelines.

A proper understanding of grey hat SEO is important as with no consequences it can improve the ranking of your site or otherwise it can cost you thousands and your website too. It’s always important to stay informed about the latest categorization, as grey hat SEO changes periodically, what’s grey hat today can be white or black hat tomorrow.

Grey Hat SEO Involves:

• Paying for reviews.
• Spun content.
• Using clickbait (content whose main purpose is to attract visitors and then encourage them to click on links while not delivering values).
• Prolific link exchanges.

Are you ready to deep dive and ready to explore the most effective grey hat techniques that can boost your website ranking in no time without getting penalized by google?

Here check out the Top 10 Advanced SEO Tips to Rank on Page 1 of Google

Check out the syllabus of the most comprehensive, job-oriented SEO Course.

Let’s start and learn 7 Grey Hat SEO Techniques to Boost Your Website Ranking.

1)     Buying Expired Domain / Domain Grabbing:

This is one of the most widely used grey hat SEO techniques to boost your website ranking. Buying an expired domain to increase your website SEO and backlink is domain grabbing. When you buy an expired domain with good authority to link back to your blog or website, it will boost your website ranking.

But it’s not advised to buy a ton of expired domains to increase your website SEO, but buying a highly relevant backlink profile domain, now and then for search engines like Google, will give a boost to your website. This is the best grey hat SEO technique to boost your website ranking.

Important Things to Keep in Mind while Buying Expired Domain:

• DA of Domain: DA (Domain Authority) is a search engine ranking developed by Moz, which predicts how likely a website is to rank in search engine result pages (SERPs). DA score ranges from one to 100, and anything over 30 is good.

• Find Domains that are at least 3 Years Old: An older domain will have a positive impact as compared to recently bought and expired domains.

• Avoid Toxic Link Built Domains: To get good SEO valued domain, avoid domains that comprise toxic backlink anchor texts which contain foreign languages like Chinese, Russian, and are useless for your website SEO.

• Clean Backlink Profile: Expired domain might have a messy backlink profile that is messy or irrelevant. Always spend time while buying expired domains, as those domains won’t have any context as per your requirement. Use tools like Semrush, Ahrefs, etc.

• 301 Redirect: Once done with buying expired domains, it’s time to redirect them all to your primary website. 301 redirect is a redirection process, where a page permanently moves to a new location such as a website.

It guides search engines like Google to redirect users to new page locations and passes 90% of link juice as well, which works great for buying expired domains to increase your website’s SEO.

2)         Careful Keyword Stuffing:

Keyword stuffing is bad SEO, and you should avoid it, but careful keyword stuffing with perfect keyword density gives the best result and can increase your website’s organic traffic and page ranking. This is one of the most common grey hat SEO techniques to boost your website ranking.

So what is perfect keyword density? Keyword density is the percentage of how many times the keyword should appear on your webpage. 1% keyword density is good keyword density, which means in an article of 1000 words, your keyword should appear 10 times. However, to be on the safer side, 0.5% keyword density doesn’t alarm the search engine and reaps the better result.

Where Should We Insert the Primary Keywords to Optimize the SEO?

It’s always important to place the primary keyword in the proper position for the maximum outcome for organic ranking. Place your keyword at the following places:

• Title tags
• H2 and H3 tags
• Image alt tags
• URLs
• Beginning and end of content

3)         Add Length to your Content:

If you are in a competitive niche and writing a 1000 to 1500 words article and still can’t achieve the desired result, try writing a 2000+ words article. Most people are not aware that lengthy articles with quality content work better with search engines, it works like a charm.

Advantage of Long-Form of Content:

• Attract more backlinks.
• Bloggers reach out to promote content.
• Social share increases for longer articles.
• Noticeable growth in search engine traffic.

To add length to your content, first, decide the niche to attract loyal audiences. One way to increase the average content length is to work on your top 10 posts that are attracting traffic.

Use Google Analytics to find your top post and start working on its content length. Since that post is already bringing traffic, updating them with keywords, images and information will increase more traffic.

To write long-form content, spend a lot of time in research, and outline main points. Use lots of subheadings H2 and H3 tags to expand the article. These are important grey hat SEO techniques to boost your website ranking, since content matters.

4)         Web 2.0 for Building Links:

Earlier, with web 1.0, pages were static and there was no permission to take control and to tweak and edit the pages. Whereas web 2.0 falls under grey hat SEO techniques to boost your website, as here users can tweak, edit and generate content using web 2.0 directories, forums, and submission sites.

Web 2.0 is used in dynamic pages, where users have permission to change the content. For Example, Wikipedia comes under web 2.0. If you find something misleading on a page, then you can tweak the content. As web 2.0 is user-generated content, it has the following benefits.

Quality Traffic: User-generated platforms send qualified visitors, which helps in increasing the website traffic and conversion rate. So, spend quality time on websites where more users are active, like Quora.

Link Benefits:  Web 2.0 is used for building links. Though web 2.0 generates no-follow links, to build a backlinks profile, you need diversified links and a do-follow link is not sufficient. Also, a few sites and blog directories from web 2.0 give do-follow links and are great for website SEO and ranking.

Web 2.0 works better when you are focusing on increasing user engagement, rather than focusing solely on website traffic. Stay active on social networking sites, Quora, Medium, rather than just promoting your post.

5)         Social Bookmarking Sites:

Another top-notch grey hat SEO technique to boost your website ranking is signing yourself to social bookmarking sites, but limit yourself to 1 or 2 submissions of your website links of latest post or old post.

This means if you are submitting only once your latest post across all social bookmarking sites, then it won’t harm your website ranking, though it will boost your website traffic. Most of the social bookmarking sites are no-follow and you can safely submit your latest blog post.

Major Social Bookmarking Sites are:

• Digg
• Inbound
• Folkd
• Scoop.it

One of the most common mistakes people make while promoting their content on social bookmarking sites is that they use the same heading and meta description.

There is no point in using the same headings and meta description as it will be duplicate content and Google might penalize it. Create a unique heading and meta descriptions while promoting on social bookmarking sites.

6)         Link Exchange:

Many people think link exchange comes under the black hat SEO technique, but that’s not the case. Automatic link exchange is the black hat SEO, but manually exchanging links comes under grey hat SEO.

What is Link Exchange?

Exchanging links with other websites or blogs comes under link exchange. It’s not white hat SEO and people avoid it to not get penalized by Google. If done correctly, you can use link exchanges to build backlinks from various sources.

How to Exchange Links without Getting Noticed by Google?

• Find a small group of bloggers from your niche and connect with them to share each other’s content. Even make a group on Facebook and start sharing and liking and commenting on their content, which you find relevant for your audience.
• You can link other websites in your content and reach out to those websites through social media sites or email. Let them know you are linking them now and ask them for a retweet. If they find your content interesting, they will also reach out to you and link you back.

7)         Multiple Social Media Accounts:

Most of us spend lots of time on social media, either Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter. As per our interest, we stumble upon many articles or images as their algorithm uses our search history.

So why not use social media sites to your advantage? As per search metrics, social signal affects your website SEO. Since social media is used widely, it’s advantageous to use grey hat SEO techniques to boost your website ranking. So how to take advantage of social signals.

You need to create multiple dummy accounts to increase your Facebook share and likes, Twitter retweets, etc. That’s why it comes under grey hat SEO. If your content is automatically getting likes and shares, then it comes under white hat SEO, but if you are purposely trying to increase your social share by using multiple accounts or buying Facebook likes, then it comes under grey hat SEO.

But if you want to become an expert in your field, then do not use this technique, as people will eventually come to know that you are faking your social media presence.

After going through grey hat SEO techniques to boost your website ranking, one question probably pops up, should you implement the grey hat SEO technique? See, either it’s white, black, or grey hat- everything includes risk.

White hat techniques have the risk of not working for your website traffic or ranking. Black hat techniques have the risk of manual action. If caught by search engines for violating the guidelines, then search engines can remove either some part of the website or the entire website from search engine indices.

Grey hat techniques are not wholly illegal. Consider the risk versus reward factor. The web is not a place where everyone plays by the rules. Your competitor might apply black hat tactics and to outrank the individual and get valuable traffic you must keep a few tricks up in your sleeves.

But again, you gain little by getting on Google’s bad side, and with Google’s algorithm getting tougher each day, the way to the safest business is white hat SEO. Keep in mind, play safe.

Other professional courses

Technical Writing Course

GST Course

Content Writing Course

Frequently Asked Questions

1)   Does black hat SEO still work?

Black hat SEO still goes on and it works, but for a short period. It might gain you traffic. But once it comes under Google’s scanner, you might lose all the hard work, time, website, and credibility. So, it’s not worth it.

2)   What are white hat backlinks?

White hat link building is an approach to driving organic traffic to your website through SEO techniques, like linking to other websites and writing quality content.

3)   Can grey hat SEO help in digital marketing?

If you can practice the commonly practiced grey hat techniques successfully in your digital marketing campaigns then it can help you in increasing brand awareness.

Conclusion

I hope I have covered various SEO techniques and you might find them interesting. So, what do you think about this article, grey hat SEO techniques to boost your website ranking? If you know any more tricks, then do comment below.