White Hat SEO Vs. Black Hat SEO Strategies
By admin on Aug 10, 2011 with Comments 1
There are basically two major classes of Search Engine Optimization – white hat and black hat. While white hat SEO techniques are carried out in line with the guidelines of search engines, the black hat techniques are not approved by search engines and are focused on eliminating from the process of indexing. Black hat techniques are recognized with dishonest methods.
However, it is worth noting that search engine spiders are capable of finding the difference between both these SEO techniques. In order to enhance your search results it is best to optimize your website using white hat SEO techniques, while avoiding the penalties that arise due to the use of black hat techniques.
When you spam or stuff your Meta tags, the result is not in the form of enhanced search results but your site gets flagged as the one that uses black hat SEO techniques. Search engines are continuously looking for spammed Meta tags.
It is a white hat SEO approach to use a solid keyword phrase that is relevant to your page, and then use it in the Meta tags.
With the black hat SEO approach there are lots of methods of hiding the content on your website. This consists of white colored text that is embedded with lots of keywords with a background that is also white. The usage of comment tags in order to hide keywords is also a black hat SEO technique. For example:
<!–Hidden content–!>
In the case of white hat SEO techniques, the content that focuses on relevant and strong keyword phrase on every page gives the best result almost every time. When a keyword phrase has been chosen, you can use it a number of times over the entire page. As an example, if a page has a Meta title – “White Hat SEO – White Hat SEO techniques,” the first paragraph of the content can be:
White hat SEO is the most efficient way to SEO. When you are not employing white hat SEO techniques, your SEO methods are not going to be effective.
The main concept behind link farming is to exchange links with other sites so as to enhance the rank of your site in search engines. In order to determine ranking, Google checks the number of sites that your site gets linked to.
Link farming is a black hat strategy that focuses on trading your link with maximum amount of sites just for the purpose of improving the search ranking of your site. This is almost fooling the search engine to believe that your website is more popular than it actually is.
Inbound linking is a white hat SEO technique. As and when your page or blog post receives a link from someone, it counts as a good inbound link. This inbound linking is unlike the link farming in black hat technique, and its objective is not around trading links for the purpose of increasing the search results.
When compelling content is created, it helps in attracting more visitors to your site. This also helps in capturing the attention of other site owners who want to develop their own content with relevant links.
Filed Under: Strategies
Most link building by most SEO firms is not “natural” and is in fact blackhat according to Google. If you have to pay for it, ask for it, comment for it or insert a link in your article to gain it, then you are manipulating Google search results and Google terms that as blackhat. You just need to view the many video’s by Matt Cutts to realize that if you are doing any of the above, then you are creating links manually and violating Google’s TOS.
It simply baffles me how many SEO experts will quickly denounce Cloaking as “unethical” or against Google’s TOS or even label it as spam which manipulates search results but then on a daily basis create artificial, manual or software generated backlinks for clients.
If you are distributing countless articles with links or posting on blogs/forums to obtain backlinks or using automated backlinking software, isn’t that also spamming to manipulate search engine results?
What is the difference? It all violates Google’s TOS.
There is also a silly mindset that whitehat SEO is risk free and blackhat is full of risks. Really? How many whitehat sites, that supposedly conformed to all of Google’s TOS, suddenly lose their ranking and all their business when Google decides to do a major algorithm update? Ha! Where is the reward for loyalty from Google?
So does “blackhat” or being “unethical” really exist anymore? Isn’t this really about traffic, conversions and surviving within an ever tightening monopoly created by Google for which we now are left with few other options, unless to line the pockets of Google shareholders.