Cloaking in seo is a technique that improves your website’s ranking on Google’s SERP results page; however, this technique is a black hat trick and can result in penalties.
What is Cloaking in SEO?
Cloaking in SEO means hiding or disguising something so that others do not know its reality. This technique is used to hide the content of website pages from search engines.
In the same way that some websites use the trick of deception and hiding information or content of their website to increase their ranking in Google.
For example, they publish a page with two different designs and content with the same URL on their website; such that the content that search engine crawlers see on this page is different from the content that users observe.
Therefore, cloaking is a technique for hiding the real content of website pages from Google crawlers and other search engines. This method is one of the black hat techniques used to circumvent the rules and principles of SEO.
Types of Cloaking in SEO
Cloaking in seo is implemented in many different ways on websites. These content hiding techniques are usually implemented through users’ browsers, IP addresses or redirects, and other methods.
The four main types of cloaking techniques are:
- User-agent cloaking
- IP-based cloaking
- JavaScript cloaking
- HTTP_REFERER and HTTP Accept-language header-based cloaking
User-agent cloaking
User-agent cloaking is a method of cloaking by identifying the user and based on the browser or device that the user is using.
In this method, software or a program is used to identify the user or visit the website by a specific device such as a mobile phone, tablet, etc. In this way, when a user searches for a keyword with his browser or device (desktop, mobile phone, tablet, etc.), a code is sent to the server.
This code is identified by the user-agent program and content which is appropriate to the browser and its user is displayed. However, when this software detects that the user is a crawler or Google bot, it displays the hidden content of the website.
IP-based cloaking
One of the most professional and technical methods of cloaking is IP-based cloaking.
This method, also known as redirection, redirects the website’s domain entries to another website; which means that users are usually redirected to the destination page from a highly visited page with high traffic.
Each user who visits your website enters your website with a specific IP address. This IP address indicates the user’s location, such as the country or province, or the user’s Internet facilities.
In this type of cloaking, you can provide content on your website that is appropriate for the user’s IP; that is, for example, the content that a Chinese user sees will be different from the content that a European user witnesses; exactly the same as what is done in filtering.
For this type of hiding, you must identify users’ IP addresses through your hosting’s cPanel features and redirect them by setting up htaccess.
JavaScript cloaking
Like the user agent method, JavaScript cloaking is implemented based on the browser that your website user is using.
In this way, if your website users or visitors use browsers that have JavaScript enabled, they will observe a different version of your website pages.
In other words, a Java cloaked page is displayed in two different ways for browsers with JavaScript enabled and disabled.
Cloaking based on HTTP_REFERER and HTTP Accept-language headers
Another type of cloaking or hiding website content is based on the type of header or HTTP_REFERER header and HTTP Accept-language header.
In this method, the header of requester is first checked, and then the appropriate version of the website is presented based on it.
That is, if the header of requester is of the HTTP Accept-language header type, different content from the website page is displayed.
Methods for implementing cloaking technique
Any types of cloaking techniques can be implemented in a suitable way to display the appropriate version of your website pages to users and search engine crawlers.
For example, you can use hidden content or HTML codes that are invisible to users on your pages. In this way, you can get crawlers points to crawl your rich content and SEO without displaying specific content to users.
Add invisible or hidden text
One of the oldest methods of cloaking is adding invisible or hidden text to the content of the website.
This is usually done by adding hidden text that is the same color as the background of the page. In this way, the user cannot see the text, but Google and other search engine crawlers are able to read and crawl this type of text.
Since this technique is very old and obvious, Google easily recognizes it and is not fooled by this technique. Hence, it is better not to implement it.
Cloaking in seo with Email
Another way to implement cloaking is to send hidden emails; that is, emails that do not have a subject or recipient name. The purpose of sending these types of emails is not to attract the attention of the user or recipient in any way, but only to record the email sending count or for implicit purposes.
Creating Flash-based Websites
Producing high-quality content as well as SEO-friendly content is one of the best internal SEO methods to improve website rankings. But producing high-quality content regularly is a bit costly. Hence, some people instead of spending money go for creating Flash pages.
Creating Flash-based Websites Flash pages is one of the methods of hiding or cloaking, to write page content in HTML. Since the language of crawlers is the same as the coding language, Flash pages are considered full of content for them.
And while crawlers see pages full of good and SEO-friendly content, users only see Flash pages. That is, there is not much HTML code in the demo versions for users.
The Negative Impact of Cloaking in SEO
All types of cloaking techniques that I mentioned in this content are all black hat SEO tricks. That is, they are techniques that bypass the principles and rules of SEO.
Despite all the charm and effects that they have on website SEO and achieving top rankings in Google SERP in a short period of time, these techniques are against Google rules.
Negative or Black Hat SEO
SEO of a website usually has to be executed in accordance with a series of principles and algorithms of Google and other search engines. If you want to implement SEO principles, you must implement internal, technical, external and local SEO techniques and strategies on your website.
Implementing all these SEO strategies is time-consuming and costly. For this reason, some SEO professionals and SEO experts use Black Hat SEO techniques to take shortcuts and get instant results.
Black Hat SEO is used to bypass Google’s SEO rules and principles, and algorithms. If Google finds out that you are using these types of techniques on your website, it will penalize your website.
Google’s penalty will include a reduction in website ranking, a reduction in domain authority, a penalty, etc. Cloaking, which is used to hide the original content of websites, is one of the black hat SEO techniques that can lead to a website penalty.
Why not use cloaking in seo?
Cloaking is an old black hat technique that has been used for years to deceive crawlers and bots of Google and other search engines.
When Google encountered this technique and realized that there were websites that were publishing hidden pages with immoral content by showing fake and display pages for crawlers, it imposed heavy penalties for this technique.
Google is so serious and decisive about this issue that in 2006, it heavily fined the website of one of the largest car manufacturers in the world, BMW, for using black hat SEO and blacklisted it for a while.
Google is constantly updating its algorithms to detect techniques like cloaking and offers new algorithms to combat these types of circumventions. And by considering heavy penalties, it prohibits websites from using these strategies.
So, instead of using cloaking in SEO, it is better to use conventional and ethical SEO principles and rules to improve your website’s ranking in Google SERPs so that you are not penalized.
Conclusion
Cloaking is a black hat SEO technique that has been used for years to improve the ranking of websites. This technique is used to hide the main content of the website pages and display fake and fraudulent content.
Some SEOs use this technique and other negative SEO techniques to achieve high rankings in Google SERP very quickly and in a very short time.
But this comes at a high price because these websites may be subject to very heavy Google penalties such as being blacklisted or blocked.
Consequently, my advice is that instead of using the cloaking technique, use basic methods to optimize your website. Try to do SEO correctly and professionally.
