Last updated on November 16, 2022

What is Cloaking in SEO?

Website optimization in businesses is so important because their website shows the visitors what product or services that specific business is providing. And for that marketers need to work on optimizing that when a person looks for a service or product your business provides, your webpage automatically appears on the first Search Engine Results Page (SERP). 

Since search engine optimization is a process in which one needs to be patient while getting the results and to achieve those results earlier and easier, marketers optimize the website by using Black Hat SEO Techniques which is also known as SEO cloaking. 

If a website is generating high traffic it means a terrific Search Engine Optimization (SEO) strategy has been used behind it, but taking modern search engines for granted can be risky for marketers as well as the website they are working on. The modern search engines can catch any inappropriate move you attempt to increase the traffic on your website, and the Black Hat SEO Technique is one of them. 

This SEO cloaking technique can help catapult your website to the top result of SERPs.

So it is better to understand what SEO cloaking technique is and whether its usage is good for your websites or not. 

What Is SEO Cloaking?

SEO cloaking is a technique to fool search engines by manipulating data or URLs so that the website reaches a higher number of traffic easily. 

A website requires content to show up in the search engine bots so that whenever anyone needs to find something, the bots help them by searching for the right content according to the search query; but in SEO cloaking, the web developers add information that does not relate to what the business offers just to increase the web traffic. This might work sometimes, but if google catches these activities on the website, it can penalize the website for a long time. 

Different Types Of SEO Cloaking

Different types of SEO cloaking can be done on a website and some of them are:

Executing Hidden Text

Executing hidden text means adding irrelevant keywords that are not related to the content or the information provided on the web pages. 

Keywords that are ranking on the search engines are added under the ordinal text as these words are overwritten and hidden from the actual users in transparent color. This can rank your website but google search engine bots can track these texts which can be bad for the website.

Flash-build websites

In the guidelines of SEO, building a website in flash is not recommended but many websites are in flash to use its features. The developer building a flash website does not build these websites on plain HTML as they create a website rich in content which is then provided to the search engine crawlers.

Email Cloaking

E-mail cloaking is masking the address and name of the sender so that the receiver of the email should know who is sending these emails.

Image gallery website 

These websites are having more images than content on the website. It’s one of the SEO cloaking techniques. Sometimes search engine bots or crawlers do not scan these images so the web developers add keywords and content to rank the website at the top. 

Drawbacks Of SEO Cloaking

Black hat SEO or SEO cloaking is not technically against the rules, and isn’t anything that could lead you to prison but these techniques and tricks are seen by google’s webmaster guidelines and because of that you might not be able to get the high SERP ranking that you want to achieve and maintain.

If you visit any professional SEO services provider, they will not go with the idea of cloaking because to generate actual traffic, it needs to be authentic to achieve the goals. 

Some of the drawbacks of SEO cloaking that you need to lookout for, are:

Google can penalize your website

If you are engaged in any kind of Black hat SEO or SEO cloaking, your website can get penalized by Google. Once the cloaking is noticed, your search engine ranking will be highly affected and all the hard world you did to gain traffic will get ruined instantly. 

Once your website gets penalized by Google, it is very difficult to recover from the penalties and again it will take months to regain the previous results.

Banning of website

When cloaking is caught on a website, google simply penalizes the website by entirely banning it or for a few months. And if a site is banned by google it is very difficult to gain the website back from the algorithm penalty. 

Brand damage

Remember these tricks are not at all appreciated by people, and gaining traffic through people with fake or manipulated content can update the visitors to your website. This can also ruin your brand image as people will not trust your business or if the visited website is different from the thing which they were looking for. 

Illegal tag on your website

As cloaking is an illegal attempt, the google search engine and the bots will sooner or later track your website and can deem you to be illegal. The black hat SEO can permanently ban your website, claiming you are illegal and you can never regain your hard work again. 

Conclusion 

Shady tricks and techniques like Black hat SEO or SEO cloaking are never worth, when it comes to gaining traffic on your website. 

There are plenty of alternatives to gain streams of traffic in a lawful and appropriate manner; and that’s why the best SEO services provider will never allow you to go this way because this professional SEO services provider knows how difficult it is to regain the website once it is banned by google. 

If you are looking for professional SEO services in the USA – NX3 Corporation is the best marketing agency providing every possible marketing and SEO service. 

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