Find Answer to Your All Questions About Cloaking in SEO
19
Jul
2021
Everyone wants to stay in the first position on Google’s ranking page. To meet the goal, SEO strategists have to optimize the website for a good ranking. However, the process takes too much time and waiting for a longer period isn’t digestible for many web owners. For achieving quick results, they tend to choose the path of ‘Black hat SEO’ techniques which is not suggested by trusted companies.
Cloaking is also a method of black hat SEO, and let’s see what the Best SEO Company in India would elaborate about cloaking in SEO.
In a technical word, cloaking is an SEO technique that is used with the purpose to manipulate users. In this method, the content and information presented to users are different from the content that is presented to search engines or bots.
This technique is used to improve a website’s search engine rankings quickly.
Though Studio45 is a leading SEO-based Company that never encourage such techniques, it is worth knowing how a few companies can claim quick results, but in actual the result can affect your business credibility. So, be aware of such scams.
Here are 5 different types of cloaking you should know.
User-agent cloaking |
A user agent is nothing but a program or mechanism that operates on behalf of any users. A real-life example is a web browser that acts as a user agent and fetches website information on any operating system. During the identification of user-agent, if it is recognised as a crawler, then cloaked content is provided. |
IP-based cloaking |
Every website that user accesses has an IP address depending upon their location and internet. In this method, users are redirected to the desired page through a page with high traffic and a good SERP ranking. You can also use the reverse DNS records to recognise the IP address and configure .htaccess for complete redirection. |
JavaScript cloaking |
Such a situation occurs when users with JavaScript browsers one version of the content whereas users with JavaScript disabled are provided with another website version. |
HTTP_REFERER cloaking |
The HTTP_REFERER header of the requester is checked and depending upon that, a cloaked and uncloaked website version is offered. |
HTTP Accept-language header cloaking |
This is the technique that checks the HTTP Accept-Language header of the user and with the matched result, a specific website version is showcased. In simple language, if the HTTP Accept-Language header is associated with a search engine, then in that case a cloaked version is offered. |
Google’s cloaking penalty
The search engine usually keeps on updating algorithms and if you use cloaking, then they will find out and can ban your website from the list of indexing.
Google will not see whether the company is big or small scale, if you breach guidelines, it will penalise you. Even, Google has blacklisted BMW for breaking Google’s guidelines.
Final thought,
As said earlier, cloaking is a black hat technique that neglect Google’s Webmaster Guidelines which could hamper a website’s credibility and impact their flow of customers.
If you ask us whether you should go for cloaking in greed of quick ranking, then we will always say NO.
Instead, we suggest you hire the Best SEO Company in India that can help you drive benefits.