7 Black Hat SEO Techniques You May Be Using Without Realising

SEO has evolved and tactics that once boosted rankings can now trigger penalties. Google’s AI powered algorithm easily detects  manipulative practices, meaning black hat SEO can tank your visibility and traffic.

7 Black Hat Techniques to Avoid

Keyword Stuffing – overloading content with unnatural keyword use.

Duplicate Content – copying or recycling content across pages.

Paid Backlinks/Link Schemes – buying links or using link farms.

Schema Misuse – adding misleading or irrelevant structured data.

Negative Misuse – trying to sabotage competitors’ rankings.

Comment Spam – dropping links in blog comments/forums.

Thin/Irrelevant Content – low value, AI-generated or mass-produced text lacking expertise.

What to do

Audit  your site, fix harmful tactics and focus on original, high-quality, user-first content. In 2025 sustainable SEO means expertise, trustworthiness and creating real value – not shortcuts.

SEO is complex and constantly evolving. Often, it’s difficult to ascertain what’s considered good SEO hygiene and what’s not, and what sits somewhere in the middle.

What may have earned your website high rankings years ago may not be relevant or recommended today.

However, if your website isn’t getting any consistent or reliable organic traffic, a common cause may be a black hat SEO tactic that you’ve adopted for your website. This could happen by accident, or you could be under the impression that it would help your website, only to find out that it does the opposite.

With Google rolling out a wealth of AI features, and with the modern search experience evolving with each passing day, it’s safe to say that it’s a more complex, multifaceted machine than it was in its early days. Google’s algorithm is incredibly sophisticated and can detect any attempts that may have once ‘fooled’ it, and in turn, penalise your website.

Here we have listed 7 common black hat SEO tactics that many adopt, which you can use to check whether you’re safe from these Google penalties or not.

What Does Black Hat SEO Mean?

Years ago, SEO was a very different beast compared to what it is now. In those days, ‘black hat’ (the opposite of ‘white hat’) SEO techniques all boiled down to wanting to cheat or deceive the Google algorithm.

It was common to see web developers and marketers trying their hand at eluding Google’s crawlers and attempting to boost their websites atop the search rankings. A common tactic was, for example, to essentially flood webpages with keywords with no logical rhyme or reason, going for a quantity-over-quality approach.

However, the Google algorithm and technology evolved dramatically over time, and it became more clued up about underhanded tactics like this. As a result, SEO became more about understanding and working with the algorithm, rather than working against it.

In 2025, with SERPs now featuring interactive features like AI Overviews, local pack listings, video and multimedia content, rich snippets, and not to mention AI Mode completing its roll-out to the UK, search engine algorithms are far more complex and intuitive. Google can detect unnatural patterns and manipulative tactics, and as a result, the red tape has proverbially tightened.

Why It’s Important to Avoid Black Hat SEO?

In 2025, any form of black hat SEO techniques will land you with a Google penalty, which can result in a significant drop in Google search rankings and, in turn, little to no organic traffic.

The March 2024 Core Update was particularly focused on reducing spammy, low-quality and manipulative content, with many sites seeing dramatic ranking losses that they’re still recovering from.

Google’s AI-led algorithm is now exceptionally good at understanding context, user intent, and natural language patterns. This means that techniques that might have slipped through the cracks before are now easily detected. If you’re then penalised by Google, your website won’t appear for the most relevant search queries for your industry, and you could be missing out on qualified, valuable organic traffic.

Google will always prefer to show its users content that aligns with Google guidelines and has been optimised to make for a good user experience.

Black Hat SEO Techniques to Avoid in 2025

Keyword Stuffing

Keyword stuffing is a common tactic which involves repeating your chosen keyword(s) throughout the content on your website, so much so that it doesn’t read naturally.

Paragraphs and sentences stuffed to the brim with keywords won’t make logical sense, but it’s what many have done over the years. The logic behind the practice is to cram as many keywords as possible into pages so that Google bots recognise as many variations as possible, regardless of how organic and natural it sounds.

Nowadays, it’s a very different ball game. Google’s algorithms can understand semantic search and context far more intuitively than before. Keywords, when used unnaturally, can be identified, even if they’re spread more evenly throughout the content. It assesses natural language patterns that can ring alarm bells when keywords appear to have been stuffed in when they don’t make logical sense, thus deeming it a high-risk tactic.

To make sure you haven’t accidentally overused a keyword in your content, hold down ‘ctrl > shift > F’ on your keyboard to open a search pop-up and type in the word you want to check. Don’t try to use as many keywords and variations as possible; instead, focus on topic clusters and semantic language relevance.

Duplicate Content

Small business owners, understandably, ay not have the time to create thorough, unique content for each page on their websites that often. As such, an easy workaround for many is to use the same content across the website. However, while this may save time, this is unlikely to avoid detection from Google’s AI bots, which are incredibly sophisticated at identifying exact duplicate content as well as those that are near-duplicates, paraphrased, or even AI-generated variations.

The salient point is that the search engine can understand when content provides no value to users, regardless of how it’s written.

Good SEO content is that which is unique, interesting, original, and relevant to your website visitors. The value of quality SEO content can’t be understated, and there is an easy way to check your site for duplicate content using this free tool.

Paid Backlinks and Link Schemes

A backlink to your website signals to Google that you’re trusted by other websites, and helps the search engine crawlers decide which search queries to offer your website up for as a search result.

High-quality backlinks will occur naturally, from industry-related websites with good domain ratings or reputable directories. However, earning links of this kind and building a strong backlink profile is time-consuming, and it’s important to not be tempted to find a quick, cheap fix by using link farms or schemes.

Companies will pose as reputable brands that create valuable link building for your website, but in reality, these backlinks are low quality and sometimes these entities are even masquerading as spam websites. If you have previously hired a company with promises of instant backlinks, you will need to perform a backlink audit to check and disavow any links that could be harming your website.

Google has become exceptionally adept at spotting unnatural link patterns, paid link farms, reciprocal schemes, and guest posting for the sole purpose of adding links.

Link building can and should be done in a way that is not against Google guidelines. With careful consideration and dedicated time spent, white hat SEO techniques can help you create a healthy backlink profile. It’s one of the core digital marketing services our team at Artemis specialise in.

Schema and Structured Data Misuse

Adding schema markup to your website is a useful way to tell Google what your website is about. There are numerous options of schema markup to choose from, depending on the nature of your business and what you provide, and when executed correctly, your search ranking listings can produce noticeable search engine features such as rich snippets, which can, by extension, improve click-through rates.

However, a black hat SEO technique is to provide Google with inaccurate or misleading structured data or (in a similar way to keyword stuffing) adding lots of irrelevant schema information to appear for certain keywords.

With the rise of AI Overviews and AI Mode, structured data has become more important for how your content appears in AI-led responses. Misleading schema can result in your content being excluded from these helpful features entirely.

If you’re unsure on what’s best practice, you can visit the Google Structured Data Policies page for reference.

Negative SEO

If you’ve noticed a competitor taking your content ideas, and have appeared higher up the Google SERP than you, it can be an incredibly frustrating experience. Sabotage is tempting, but two wrongs don’t make a right.

Many have fallen into the trap of buying spammy links and pointing them at their competitors’ domains to make it seem as though they have violated Google’s guidelines.

However, this practice is not only unethical, but extremely ineffective and a huge waste of time. This may also lead to a similar negative SEO ambush against your website from said competitor, or another one who notices you doing the same. The best thing to do is to review your existing content and identify ways you can improve it organically and ethically.

Comment Spam and Forum Manipulation

While it may be tempting to comment on blogs or forums with links to your website, Google may not look at it as favourably as you think. Website owners may flag your comment(s) as spam, which will only add to the issue. Google considers excessive comments with links very spammy anyway, so unless you can remember the websites you have posted comments on, this may be tricky to reverse engineer.

Thin and Irrelevant Content

AI writing tools have become commonplace and widely adopted, with many business owners feeling the temptation to use AI to generate large volumes of content quickly, cheaply, and with minimal supervision.

However, this has drawbacks; creating thin, low-value content at scale using AI tools is risky. Google can detect content that lacks expertise, experience, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness (E-E-A-T). This includes:

• Mass-produced AI content with little original insight
• AI-generated content that hasn’t been properly reviewed, sub-edited or improved by human experts
• Content created purely to target keywords without providing genuine value
• AI content that misrepresents expertise or experience

While there’s nothing to suggest AI tools should be entirely avoided, caution should be exercised so that they are used responsibly rather than as a replacement for human expertise and genuine value creation.

What to Do If You’ve Deployed Black Hat SEO Tactics

If you are guilty of any of the above, we would recommend a thorough review and tidy-up of your site as the most pressing action. Go through each of the ‘bad’ SEO methods you’ve used and rectify them. Even if you may have accidentally performed a black hat SEO tactic without knowing its implications (such as keyword stuffing or paying for links), it’s important to reverse and change them where possible.

It might take time for Google to re-crawl your website, not to mention regain any lost organic rankings or traffic. If you want more details of expected recovery timelines, this article from John Mueller may be worth a read.

Alternatively, if you’re a busy business owner with not a lot of time on your hands, hire an SEO agency to carry out an extensive audit and remove any traces of black hat SEO. At Artemis, we have 21+ years of experience working on both the technical and creative sides of SEO, with a wide range of services to help you get more targeted organic search traffic to your website.

How to Avoid Accidental Black Hat SEO Tactics in the Future

If you’re working on your website and SEO yourself, then we cannot understate the importance of doing your own research. SEO in 2025 is more complex than ever, with AI-powered search features changing how users find and engage with content, and engines themselves are becoming more in tune with evolving user expectations. Anything that’s deemed as a ‘quick fix’ is probably too good to be true and more likely to be a detriment to your efforts rather than anything of value.

Focus on creating genuinely valuable content that demonstrates real expertise and provides excellent user experiences. With features like AI Overviews and AI Mode now part of the search landscape, the quality bar is higher than ever.

If you’re not sure how best to proceed, consulting an expert SEO and digital marketing agency is the safest possible way to ensure you’re not using any black hat SEO techniques without realising. Contact Artemis today for a free SEO consultation to navigate the ‘new Google’ with confidence and reassurance.