What is Cloaking and Types of Cloaking in SEO

We all want our website or web page to rank first on search engine results pages (SERP). To achieve this, we only need to optimize our website in a way that makes it worthy of high ranking. It can take time in search engine optimization, and we don’t want it to be.

An easier way is to use “Black Hat SEO techniques” to propel you to the top results of a SERP. One of those methods is hiding within SEO. Let’s continue the discussion.

What is Cloaking in SEO?

Camouflage is an SEO technique that allows users to see different information or content than what is presented to search engine spiders (i.e. crawlers) to improve the website’s rankings in search engines.

What are the differences between cloaking methods and how do they work?

• User agent masking
• Masking based upon IP
• JavaScript Hiding
• Hiding HTTP_REFERER
• Hiding HTTP Acceptable-language header

User agent masking A user agent is a program or software agent that acts for the user. A web browser can act as a user agents to retrieve information from websites on an operating systems. When you send a request, your browser sends a number to the server. This code will be used to identify/distinguish the user agent. Hidden content is served to the user agent if it is identified as a crawler.

IP-based masking Each user who visits a website is assigned an IP address based upon their location and internet provider. This allows users to be redirected directly to the desired page via a page with high traffic volume and good SERP ranking. Reverse DNS records, which are available in your host’s control panel, can be used to identify the IP address. You can then configure.htaccess for redirection. This is the preferred method of camouflage.

JavaScript masking This happens when JavaScript-enabled users receive one version of content, while JavaScript-disabled users (such as search engines), receive another version.

Hiding HTTP_REFERER This method checks the HTTP_REFERER header from the requestor and serves a masked or unmasked website.

Hiding HTTP Accept header This technique checks the user’s Accept-Language HTTP head and, based on the match, presents a specific version. Simply put, a masked version will be served if the Accept Language HTTP header matches that of a search engines.

What are the most common ways to cloak in SEO?

Let’s now learn how to make Cloaking work with these simple tips:

This can be achieved by adding text of the exact same color to the background, so it isn’t visible to the eye.

SEO guidelines warn against Flash. Some websites can’t avoid Flash. Instead of redoing the entire site in plain HTML, they create web pages rich with content and serve them to search engine crawlers as well as visitors’ flash pages.

A good SEO technique should have a high “TEXT-to-HTML ratio”. This means that your HTML tags should be accompanied by more text on the page. Your text to HTML ratio will be lower if you write short articles or posts. Cloaking is a way to avoid having their website redesign in such situations.

• Java scripts replaced

JavaScript can be used to display content to non-JavaScript-enabled users that matches textual information in Flash or other media elements.

Is there a white hat cloak?

A common question is: Is there a White Hat Cloaking?

Matt Cutts said:

Google calls white hat cloaking a contradiction. We have never had to make an exception regarding ‘white-hat’ cloaking. If you hear that, it is dangerous.

He said that if a website contains code that distinguishes Googlebot on the basis user agent or IP address then Google may take legal action against the site.

This answers our question about the absence of “White Hat Cloaking” in Google’s webmaster guides. Don’t be misled if you are told to use white hat camouflage.

What is Google’s penalty for cloaking

The search engine regularly updates its algorithm. If you are using cloaking it will find out and may permanently ban your site from indexing. Google “blacklisted BMW, a German automobile manufacturer, for violating its guidelines in Feb 2006.

SEO: Should cloaking be allowed?

Cloaking is a black hat method that violates search engine optimization laws. Google Webmaster Guidelines.

If you ask us whether you should cloak your website to trick crawlers to get high rankings, we will tell you NO. Search engines don’t like being tricked. Your website is crawled multiple time using different IP addresses. Their complex and strict algorithm will detect any cloaking.

Keep in mind the methods that we’ve discussed in this article to determine what is considered cloaking from Google and what it’s not. Leave comments below to let us know what you think.

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