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Few things in life are strictly black and white, but in the SEO (search engine optimization) world it is important to be able to identify and understand the difference between White Hat and Black Hat strategies. In the simplest sense, the two can be described as follows:
White Hat SEO – Ethical SEO tactics in which you follow the guidelines established by the search engines for long term stability and success.
Black Hat SEO – Unethical SEO tactics in which you try to trick the search engines in order to gain quick results.
While the search engines still have a lot of work ahead of them, they strive to keep search results as genuine and helpful as possible for searchers. To accomplish this goal, the search engines, with Google leading the pack, have established usability guidelines for websites to follow. By following these webmaster guidelines, you can ensure that your website will remain in the good graces of the search engines and have the ability to grow in strength (and improve search rankings) on a long term scale.
White Hat SEO tactics revolve around following the webmaster guidelines. White Hat is all about playing by the rules in order to garner long term stability for a website. White Hat SEO takes a great deal of work and creativity – it is definitely a challenge – but the hard is what makes it great. By taking the time to invest the proper, and approved, SEO strategies in your online campaigns, you will see a payoff in the end. White Hat tactics won’t get your site to rank immediately, but in the end you will have a website that is built with good content, clean linking, and the ability to bring you traffic, leads and funds into the future. At Astonish Results, we pride ourselves on employing and advising only White Hat SEO campaigns. We do our best to educate clients on SEO best practices so they don’t get falsely lured into the short term charms of Black Hat SEO.
Black Hat SEO is a strategy for getting short term results. Through Black Hat tactics such as keyword stuffing and link farming you can get your site high rankings quickly, but you can generally anticipate that a Black Hat site will be banned or penalized once the search engines catch on to the unethical behavior. Websites that utilize Black Hat strategies are generally looking for a quick fix or to turn a quick profit. Companies who are trying to develop a long term web presence will only hurt their reputation if they participate in Black Hat SEO. We understand that Black Hat SEO can be tempting, primarily because it will work – for a short period of time. However, if you want to be considered a legit source on the web, you need to follow the rules.
Here are some of the major Black Hat SEO strategies you should be sure to avoid on your website:
Keyword stuffing: Loading a page with a bunch of keywords and nothing else. You need to spread keywords throughout your content to avoid being penalized by the search engines.
Hidden text: Displaying text or links so that they are invisible to the reader but available for the search spiders to crawl. This can be done by putting white font on a white background. If it appears that your website is trying to deceive the search engines with hidden text or links, the site could be removed from the search results.
Doorway Pages/Cloaking: Pages that are built for the search engines to crawl, and not for humans to see. They are hidden pages that are built with the intention of tricking the search engines into thinking a site has more content than it actually does in order to rank higher in the search results.
Overall, if you want your business and its web presence to be considered legit, you should steer clear of Black Hat SEO strategies. They are simply not worth the risk of having your website either temporarily or even permanently removed from the search results. Stick with White Hat SEO practices and you’ll be in the pink.
June 8, 2011 at 3:36 pm
Thanks for this article. I find it extremely frustrating when competitors that have been using black hat tactics for several years and still aren’t being penalized.
June 8, 2011 at 3:58 pm
Thanks for commenting and sharing your frustration, James! It is indeed frustrating when your competitors are getting away with utilizing black hat tactics, but it is a very risky practice. Those who use black hat SEO could be page 1 one day and be completely shut down the next. It is more important to follow the guidelines set by the search engines to make sure your site will have long term stability and success.