Cloaking is a deceptive SEO technique where different content is presented to search engines than to human visitors. This method aims to improve search engine rankings by showing optimized content to search engines while displaying different information to users.

Cloaking violates search engine guidelines and can lead to severe penalties, including being banned from search engine results. Ethical SEO practices encourage consistent and genuine content to users and search engines to maintain trust and credibility.

Example

“The website was penalized by Google for using cloaking to manipulate its search engine rankings.”