What is Cloaking in Search Engine Optimization & Should You Do Cloaking in 2020?

 Cloaking is a technique in search engine optimization (SEO) by which content is expanded to the search engine circle that varies from the way it is presented to the end-users. It is a web app server programmed to present variegated content to the end-users and search engines in order to distort the ranking of search engines by cloaking content. In addition. It is considered black hat style in SEO.

How Is Cloaking Performed?

In the internet world, each and every device including computer, laptop, smartphones, tablets, etc. is identified by an IP address. Through SEO Cloaking, the content is delivered with the help of the user's IP addresses or HTTP header. Blocking is accomplished by modifying a file known as .htaccess. The Apache server basically consists of a module that computes as a "mod_rewrite" with which you can incorporate anonymization techniques into web pages. 

Webmasters collect IP addresses, and if mo_rewrite detects that an IP address belongs to a search engine, the server-side script expands a different version of Web page: If the IP address is not recognized as any crawler, then it is from a visitor, thus the standard web page is delivered.

Example: 

Hide white hat - does the concept exist?

The concept of white hat cloaking has sparked much controversy. The white hat cloaking as the name suggests is a contrast to black hat cloaking. However, it is no exception and is still considered dangerous. If any website includes code identifying the bot in terms of IP address or user agent, Google search bot considers it Cloaking and may take action. So there is no concept called white hat cloaking in Google's guidelines.

A common practice of Cloaking in Search Engine Optimization

Here are some common SEO blocking practices -

Flash sites

Instead of creating the website in plain HTML format, the developer creates a webpage with a lot of content and extends it to the search engine crawlers and flash pages of the users.

Hidden text

Hidden text is a technique implemented by including text content in the same color as the background of a web page, making it invisible to visitors.

Web Apps Based on HTML

To get a good search engine ranking, your website should have an ideal text to HTML ratio. When you don't have enough content, this percentage tends to decrease. To avoid such scenarios, web app owners use Cloaking to adhere to guidelines.

JavaScript replacement

In this technology, developers use JavaScript to deliver content to a visitor that is not integrated with JavaScrip that aligns with textual information within multimedia elements.

Should you perform SEO Cloaking in 2020?

The simple answer to this question would be negative. Considering that it is a technique that deceives the search engine to improve the index, and this is against the guidelines; It should be avoided. Additionally, your website is crawled multiple times by multiple IP addresses and the complex algorithm will determine whether or not you have incorporated any cloaking technique.

Google is constantly updating its algorithm, and in the event that you implement website anonymization, you are putting your website at risk of a permanent ban. If you need white hat SEO services in Delhi/NCR, you can contact us. We also offer SEO Training Programme with Advance SEO.