5 Reliable Gray Hat SEO Techniques to Use in 2018

The beautiful thing about SEO practices is that it works. Whether you’re on the good side of search engines or not, you can see the results of your hard work. Your traffic grows and site’s ranking rises. Everything is well.

Unfortunately, going against search engine guidelines might get you penalized. That’s why it’s essential for a digital marketing agency Manila to find the right practices that work for them like a charm. There are different practices SEOs can try to improve their traffic but not all of them provide instant results. Hence, SEOs combine good and bad SEO techniques to grow search traffic.

This is where Gray Hat techniques come in. These techniques are a combination of White Hat SEO – techniques that follow search engine guidelines – and Black Hat SEO – questionable strategies that go against search engine guidelines. SEOs prefer Gray Hat because it’s less risky than Black Hat and generates results faster than White Hat.

There are several Gray Hat methods you can use this 2018. Below are some of the SEO techniques to try for growing search traffic.

Buying new and expired domains

This tactic is known as domain grabbing. It’s highly effective when executed properly. It is used by SEOs all over the world to improve their backlink profile.

Acquiring an expired domain is mostly used by SEOs because of the site’s backlink profile and established trustworthiness. Using these domains to link back to one of your pages or post gives you a boost in rankings. But it’s not enough to buy several domains for the sake of increasing your site’s rankings. It’s also crucial to check the domains names you wish to acquire.

Here are 2 things you must remember when looking for domains:

– Check the domain authority (DA)

– Look for broken links

The domain authority helps you check the popularity of the domain. A domain with DA above 30 has a good backlink profile. Meanwhile, it’s a must to scrape the site for toxic links. It helps you decide if the domain is worth the purchase.

Increasing word count

Several established SEO blogs like Moz, CoSchedule, and HubSpot understand the power of long-form content. These blogs publish content with more than 2000 words per post. According to Bloggers Passion, increasing word count is one of the most effective Gray Hat methods.

Long form of content works because it attracts backlinks and promotes social sharing. It also gives you a reason to reach out to other bloggers and engage with readers. If you want to experiences these perks, then you need to start writing and going in-depth of your topic.

Using Private Blog Network (PBN)

PBN can be a Black Hat method if you’re using duplicate content and irrelevant backlinks. If you create original, high-quality content relevant to the topic you want to rank for, then the technique is under Gray Hat. Most people stopped using PBN after the Google Penguin update, but it is still useful for backlink and SEO.

If you wish to try PBN, there are 2 ways on how to do it. You can pay other PBNs to link to your site. But, be wary. Most of these networks are contain irrelevant content and can negatively affect your link juice. You can always build your own PBN. It’s much safer than relying on other networks but it takes time and effort.

Finding the perfect keyword density

Keyword stuffing is not a good SEO practice. But, finding the perfect keyword density is great for increasing traffic and raising search engine ranking. However, there is no specific number of times you need to use the keyword to ensure you get the best of keyword optimization.

One solution to remember is to place the keyword on specific places of your content. Ensure that your keyword is on the title tag, image alt tag, H2 and H3 tags, and URL. It also helps when you place your keywords on the beginning and at the end of your content.

Still, over-optimizing your content can hurt your readership. Repeating the keyword several times makes readers look for other sources that are well-crafted and relevant to the information they are looking for. Instead of using the same words repeatedly, you can use different search terms relevant to your primary keyword.

Having multiple social media accounts

Search engines, especially Google, values social signals. The same goes for user profiles. That is why you can find several spammy user accounts on forums and social networking sites. Those are SEOs at work.

Creating an account on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram is easy but these platforms are working hard to verify the validity of the information provided. If you successfully create several accounts, you can use these to increase your shares, retweets, likes, and pins.

These are five of the many Gray Hat SEO techniques digital marketers use daily. These are not secrets and search engines are aware of them. That’s why they are penalizing sites who wish to go over their guidelines. Thus, it is crucial to properly execute each strategy to achieve your goals and get the results you want.