Amazon Black hat techniques and hacks are practices that are against the general search engine guidelines set up by any company. This is used to get a better and higher site ranking in search engine results. However, these black hat hacks are entirely unethical and are not legal.

However, the black hat trick is implemented in Amazon’s e-commerce marketing by sellers worldwide. It takes a lot of time for a new product to get an excellent high rank and enough reviews and ratings. To avoid this issue, individual sellers and digital marketing operators use e-Commerce Black hat tricks to get a higher level.

Some commonly used Black Hat Techniques

• Fiddling with Reviews

Fiddling with reviews is a common technique that is used by a lot of sellers all around the world. Since reviews play a vital role and have a significant impact on the conversion in the world of e-commerce. If a seller suddenly realizes that they are getting one-star ratings due to many negative reviews, the seller tries to tamper with the discussions.

A negative review can bring a sense of doubt to a potential customer. To avoid this, most of the sellers decide to buy positive reviews of their products. Some sellers also use the tactic where they buy negative reviews for their competitors instead of purchasing a positive review for themselves. All this does not have any direct impact on their company, but it ends up affecting the brand image of its competitors.

• Manipulation of Search Result

The companies which rank higher on the search engine results for Amazon get many more customers than companies with lower search engine rankings. Getting on the top takes a lot of time. This process is slow and steady.  However, most of the impatient sellers do not want to wait for organic growth in their ratings. Instead of waiting for organic growth, most of the sellers try to manipulate the search engine results. This can be done negatively by reporting the product of their competitors on leaving any negative comments.

Another way of managing the search engine ranking is to create accounts and search for their products by exploring them and adding them to the cart without any intention of buying. This directly affects the Amazon algorithm, which ultimately helps them boost their search engine ranking in the Amazon keyword searches.

• Draining the Advertising Spend of a Competitor

Many sellers resort to this method, where they drain the money spent on advertisements for their competitors. This can be done quickly by clicking on the link and using up their entire advertisement budget. Although this helps Amazon to make a lot of money, there are no conversions for the competitor. This not only affects the score of the advertisement but also modifies the future algorithm of the competitor’s ad.

• Claims of false trademark infringement

Amazon has great sensitivity when it comes to counterfeits. As a result, this is used by some of the merchants who are willing to take the system by filing a number of Trademark infringement claims against their competitors which pushes the business into a suspended category. Even if the target competitor gets his own selling privileges reinstated the process takes a few days to several weeks in which they lose a considerable amount of sales giving a lot of time to their competitors to capture the market.

• False Product Claim

Some of the merchants hire people to buy products from their computers website and then return the product stating that it contains a band ingredient or it is a regulated product. Some of the merchants also ask these hired people to return the products stating that it was false or duplicates. This has a direct and drastic effect on the competitor’s profile.

Consequences of Black Hat

The Amazon guidelines clearly state that if a person attempts to manipulate the content or the features by contributing any false or misleading information they may face a suspension or termination of their account.

Consequences for individual users are not very serious. Most of the individual users can create multiple new or fake accounts. As a result even after Amazon has attempted to deter the people from creating multiple accounts, they have been unsuccessful. When it comes to sellers there is a slightly greater risk as compared to individuals.

Tips to avoid Amazon Black Hat

• The first and easiest way to protect yourself from Amazon black hat is to get your brand registered in the Amazon brand registry. It helps you to protect your business and demonstrate your intellectual property. This technique is highly useful especially to fight against false claims. It helps you to protect your business and demonstrate your intellectual property. This technique is highly useful especially to fight against counterfeits but also against false claims that are made as a part of the Black hat technique.
• Once you get your brand register on Amazon and your application is accepted you will have a much better and more appropriate representation for your business. Amazon also provides you with additional tools that can help you to protect yourself from black hatters.
• You can also make sure that your business is completely based on honest ethics.
• Try to stay away from banned products.