3. Avoid Buying Links

If you have been in the industry for some while, you know that buying links will earn you Google's penalties. Of course, you might want to argue that others are doing it, but there will be no mercy from the big "G" if you get caught.

Some black hat SEO companies will claim their links are superior or have a way around it. It is better to err on the path of caution.

4. Stay away from Hiding Content.

Some marketers are in the habit of hiding content to help rank their articles. For example, black SEO marketers will make their text the same as their background colour. They do this to help the ranking of their content on the search engine result page.

Google frowns at such practice; they love transparency. However, they dislike it when you hide content to deceive both the search engine and users.

5. Avoid Over-populating your web page with Ads.

Your website content is meant for users and not search engines. Avoid overpopulating your website with ads that makes reading your content difficult. When your website content is challenging to read, it becomes offensive to your users.

Google's top-heavy update was released in 2012; its essence was to address overloaded websites with ads.