White Hat SEO vs Black Hat SEO?

You may have heard the terms “white hat” and “black hat” in relation to SEO (Search Engine Optimization). But do you know what they are, what the differences between them?

In short, when you use “white hat” strategies and techniques in your digital campaigns, you’re doing everything right and above board. On the other hand, “black hat” techniques are favoured by many because they often yield better results in the short term.

This is due to the underhanded way they work (more on that in a moment).

What you need to know is that search engine spiders have become much more sophisticated, and can spot the difference between white hat and black hat SEO efforts. So, while it may be tempting to get that initial hit from “black hat” techniques, you should always optimize your site with white hat SEO. This will yield better search results over time, and you will avoid the penalties of “black hat SEO.” Here are some good examples:

META TAGS

Black Hat SEO – Stuffing or Spamming Meta Tags

Stuffing or spamming your Meta tags does nothing for your search results except flag your site as one using black hat SEO. Search engines are always on the lookout for spammed Meta tags. For example, let’s say an online pet store called Fiction Pets is stuffing its Meta tags. The site’s black hat Meta keywords might read:

• <meta name=”keywords” content=”fiction pets, pets, dogs and cats, pet stores, dogs, cats, lizards, birds, dog collars, hamster cages, Jessica alba, fish, dog shampoo, dog treats, bird seed, good dogs, bad dogs, nice kitty”>

Its stuffed Meta description might read:

• <meta name=”description” content=”Fiction Pets is the best pet store of all the pet stores. You’ve never seen a pet store like Fiction Pets. best pet stores, good pet stores, visit pet stores, contact pet stores”>

White Hat SEO – Choose a Solid Keyword Phrase

Research your keyword phrase.

Choose a solid keyword phrase that accurately represents your page and uses it in your Meta tags. An example of Meta keywords:

• <meta name=”keywords” content=”online pet store, fiction pets, pet supplies, pets store, pet supply store”>

A white hat Meta description could be:

• <meta name=”description” content=”Fiction Pets is an online pet store with a full line of pet supplies for dogs, cats, birds, fish and more. Our pet supply store can help you get everything you need for all of your pets.”>

CONTENT

Black Hat SEO – Hidden Content

There are many ways to hide content on your site. All of them are black hat SEO methods.

Hidden content includes white text full of keywords on a white background. Another black hat SEO method is using comment tags to hide keywords. For example:

• <!–hidden content, hidden content is bad, hidden content in comment tags is bad–!>

Doorway or Gateway pages – These are low quality web pages, which are not provided with enough contents, but are done with spontaneous keyword stuffing.  This process of implementing poor quality page is termed as Doorway or Gateway pages.

Mirror websites – In this process a person host multiple websites, but theoretically provide similar types of contents in each of them.

Page Hijacking – Page hijacking is a technique, where someone creates a dummy and bogus content which is served to crawler like the original one, but guides website users to some nasty or fraud websites.

White Hat SEO – Quality Content

Content that targets a strong, related keyword phrase on each page wins every time. After you’ve chosen your keyword phrase, use it consistently throughout the page. For example, a page with a Meta title of “White Hat SEO – White Hat SEO methods” could have this first paragraph of content:

White hat SEO is the key to effective search engine optimization.

If you’re not using white hat SEO methods, none of your SEO techniques will be effective.

Serve visitors – White Hat SEO technique clearly says that contents or images used in websites must be created for visitors and it should not be manipulated in any way to satisfy search engine needs or results.  You must follow this simple and golden rule to stay on the positive side.

Good quality content – Contents are the main aspect of SEO techniques, which leaves negligible space for poor quality content.  Any SEO professional must use good quality content for search engines and visitors, which are informative and helpful for both. Check out attributes of high quality content.

Good quality web pages – Use good quality web pages.  Group of good quality web pages ensure that performance of website remains in a good condition, irrespective of the small changes in the algorithm of search engine processes.

LINKING

Black Hat SEO – Link Farming 

The idea behind link farming is that you exchange links with other websites to boost your site’s rank in search results. Search engines like Google examine how many sites are linking to yours when determining rank.

With a link farm, you’ve traded your link with many sites for the sole purpose of increasing your site’s search rank. In effect, you’re trying to fool the search engine into thinking your site is more popular than it really is.

Cloaking – Some individuals create two different versions of page for search engines and visitors.  When search engine spider/bots crawl through the page, it is satisfied with the processes used in preparing it; however, visitors get something entirely different on display.  This process is called cloaking.

White Hat SEO – Inbound Linking

When someone links to your blog post or a page on your site within their content, you have a quality inbound link. Unlike with black hat link farming, inbound linking is not a link list traded for the sake of boosting your search results.