Black Hat VS. White Hat

Tons of different SEO techniques are available to use in improve a site’s ranking in search engines. Some of those techniques are composed of positive or ethical but some are considered manipulative and risky. A lot of SEO marketers use one or both of the strategies to different extent.

Non-manipulative and safe techniques are termed White Hat SEO, otherwise, it is called Black Hat. Optimizing META tags, submitting to directories, making sitemaps, putting keywords in URLs, creating keyword-optimized content, obtaining links on related sites are some of the White Hat SEO. Using these techniques will help search engines detect pages that are relevant for the user’s search. Such methods are highly recommended by the search engines.

On the other hand, some examples of Black Hat SEO are redirecting search engine “spiders” to a page different from the user see, putting small fonts at the end of each page, mass-posting “spam” comments. These methods can reduce the quality of the results from search engines. These Black Hat strategies are trying to deceive the user by routing him to a different sight completely irrelevant, which puts him at odds with the purpose of search engines.

Black Hat SEO strategies are easier and faster to implement usually, but they can cause a search engine to remove sites from the results list. However, on the long run they become ineffective. Once a search engine catches a site using the Black Hat techniques, a penalty is usually given.

White SEO requires more time but holds a better long-term use and has a more positive impact. People prefer to use web sites they have not been deceived into visiting, and search engines do not like to list sites which have manipulated their way to a high ranking. Therefore, if a site is using the White Hat techniques then there should not be a worry bout being removed from search engine results.