Black Hat vs White Hat SEO: What’s the Difference?

09 Sep Black Hat vs White Hat SEO: What’s the Difference?

SEO or Search Engine Optimization is a sought-after internet marketing strategy that improves the quality and volume of traffic to a particular website. A vital part of online marketing, SEO is part science, part art. Proper SEO can mean the difference between success and failure for any business. Strategies have been developed to improve SEO efforts in order to rank a site higher on the search engine results pages (SERP), as well as increase a site’s organic traffic. Search engines such as Google determine their rankings by using proprietary algorithms, and SEO applies new strategies and principles in order to improve upon a website’s search engine ranking.

SEO techniques are often classified into two categories: using search engine recommended techniques and using techniques that search engines don’t approve of. The difference between the techniques used when applying these principles are categorized as black hat and white hat SEO. The difference between the two? It all lies within the SEO expert and how they conducted their SEO strategy. With black hat SEO, the quick, short-term approach that will get you penalized is focused on. While with white hat SEO, the approach is slower, but often times more successful in the long run, as it is more focused towards the long term results. The tortoise did beat the hare after all.

Black hat SEO often involves deception, as attempts to improve rankings are done in ways that are not approved by search engines and go against the current guidelines. While white hat SEO complies with search engine guidelines, and uses the proper methods to achieve high search rankings. White hat techniques take longer to improve rankings, but often produce results that last a long time. Whereas black hats anticipate that their site will be penalized once the search engine discovers what they are doing. All in all, black hat SEO is often used by those who are looking for a quick financial return, not a long-term investment. Overall, it is smart to join the white hat camp in order to prevent the disastrous implications that it can cause for your business and website. Remember, black hat practices always get caught in the end.

Worried that you might be using black hat techniques? Never fear! Listed below are some of the top used black and white hat SEO techniques so you can see for yourself if you are potentially comprising your website:

BLACK HAT TECHNIQUES:

1. Keyword Stuffing – Listing long lists of keywords without using the proper formation. This is done by loading up a webpage with keywords in the content, or in the meta-tags.
2. Invisible Text – The placing of keywords in white text located on a white background so the text is not visible, but can still attract search engine spiders. Content can also be hidden within the code, so it’s not visible to the end user of the site.
3. Invisible iFrames – Used to download software onto the user’s computer, without the user’s knowledge.
4. Doorway Pages – This is a fake page that the user never sees. This fake page is credited with the sole purpose to trick search engine spiders into indexing the site higher.
5. Spamdexing – The practice of repeating unrelated phrases which manipulates the standing or relevancy of resources that are indexed by the search engine.
6. Link Farming – Free for all (FFA) pages and link farms only purpose is to list links of unrelated websites. These sites will not provide you with any traffic and you run the risk of your site being banned for participating.
7. Parasite Hosting – This is when a website is hosted on someone else’s server without their consent.

WHITE HAT TECHNIQUES:

1. Keyword Analysis and Use – Make sure you are using keywords and key phrases throughout your website. Do research on the keywords and key phrases you think others may use to find your site. Try not to use single words, as they are not always the most effective. Instead, use multi-word phrases that are more specific to your product or service.
2. Cross Linking – This is when pages are appropriately linked internally on a website.
3. Link Building – Use quality inbound links from white label services and other trusted web pages that are ranked highly by search engines and who are relevant to your webpage.
4. Meta-Data and Titles – Creating proper meta-data and titles are imperative, so make sure that your page titles are an accurate representation of the content on your webpage.
5. Strong Content – Content is king, and there is nothing more valuable than having well written, quality content. Search engines reward those with good quality content.
6. Guest Blogging – This is the process of writing a blog post for someone else’s website. The reasoning behind this is to get back-links in order to increase search engine rankings.
7. Separate Content from Presentation – Be sure to separate your design elements from your content. This will create a “leaner” code that will make it easier for search engines to search and better understand the content of your webpage.