What is Black Hat and White Hat SEO?

What is Black Hat and White Hat SEO? If you’re familiar with what SEO is and how to use it, but would like a broader understanding of what works and what should be avoided, it’s important to know there are two types of SEO; Black Hat SEO and White Hat SEO. Black hat SEO and white hat SEO are terms used to describe the different techniques and approaches to using SEO strategies. The best way to understand the differences is to compare the two.

What is black hat SEO? To easily understand these terms, think of it like black magic and white magic, one is good and one is bad. To be blunt, black hat SEO means bending the rules in ways that can get you and your website in trouble. If that still doesn’t clear it up for you, it means your website could get banned.

So why do marketers go for this option? It’s the faster way to get higher rankings in a short amount of time. This technique is used particularly to get results from search engines, and not really for actual human page visitors.

Black hat SEO techniques:

•Random keywords This means using keywords in the content that are unrelated to the article or even website. This is a risky one to use, because search engines recognize the unnatural content and it automatically looks like spam.

•Hidden links and text A very common technique to use for black hat is to hide text within the content that readers and page visitors cannot see, but is picked up and recognized by search engines. This is done by making the text the same colour as the background, hiding a link in a symbol or character such as something small like a comma or hyphen, and even setting the font size to zero so you just cannot see it.

•Automated comments This is pretty easy to understand without an example. Automated comments are comments made by robots. This is instantly recognized as spam.

•Link Farms Link farming is also a common technique among black hat SEO marketers. Put simply, this means a website page of a bunch of different website links and inbound links all linking to other and unrelated websites – a mass of links for the purpose of trying to improve ranking.

•Doorway Pages Doorway pages are fake pages that are filled with a lot of links and keywords that once clicked on by visitors, automatically redirects you to a pointless, separate page. This black hat SEO technique is used specifically to make it easier for search engine results to find and display the page.

Now let’s look at the other option, white hat SEO. White hat SEO is used for long term success and more targeted toward an audience of human visitors and readers. The process may take a little longer to work, but the long-term results are far more worth it and you avoid being seen as spam.

White hat SEO techniques: •Quality Content Consistent quality content on your site is not only enjoyable for page visitors, it’s also an effective way to prove your website legitimacy and shows search engine results that your page is original and definitely not spam. The key components to your quality content are relevant keywords and unique, original content.

•Relevant keywords It is very important that you keep your keywords relevant to your titles and your overall page niche.

This is a simple way of avoiding being red-flagged as spam. Stay relevant, and stay consistent.

•Internal links Linking to other content on your site is a great addition to your SEO marketing strategy, as long as you don’t stuff in too many.

•Meta Description This is the first couple of sentences that’ll appear in a search engine result under your title. And it’s very important you keep these well written and relevant to your title. Also making sure the keywords in your meta description are relevant to your title and content.

Answering the question, what is black hat SEO and white hat SEO They are two different SEO techniques used to improve your website rankings. Black hat SEO is used to achieve fast, short term results, but is very risky. White hat SEO is a long term strategy with lasting results and no risk of being seen as spam.

So whichever route you choose, make sure you understand the risks and time involved.

Related Tags: Professional SEO Services, Web Design Services London