With so much conflicting information out there, it can be hard to tell what’s really ethical when it comes to online marketing. Are there really lines you shouldn’t cross? And if so, how do you determine whether you’re on the right or wrong side of them? This post will break down what makes white hat, grey hat and black hat SEO different, how to tell the difference between them and why you should care about knowing the difference.
White Hat SEO:
Google loves to give advice. One of their best-known bits of wisdom is that a site should be optimized for both users and search engines. That’s why we call it white hat SEO: optimizing your site with an eye toward human visitors as well as search engine robots.
This approach isn’t about tricking or fooling anyone; it’s about creating a great experience for everyone who visits your website—and making sure you rank highly in Google search results because you deserve to, not because you tricked Google into giving you higher rankings than sites that are better suited to searchers’ needs. (This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t also optimize your pages for users, too.)
Grey Hat SEO:
In between white hat SEO and black hat SEO lies grey hat SEO. The goal of grey hat SEO is to beat Google at its own game by bending its rules just enough so that you can get some traffic from high-ranking search positions on Google.
In internet marketing, a grey-hat technique is an approach to search engine optimization that in principle may violate Google’s Webmaster Guidelines or other similar codes of conduct but avoids any deliberate deception.
Common techniques include having many internal links pointing to a page (but not having many links pointing back), setting up multiple pages with almost identical content as doorway pages leading to one’s primary website and keyword stuffing.
While these practices are frowned upon by some marketers, they are considered legitimate ways of improving page rank by most others. As such they fall into a legal gray area between black hat and white hat methods.
The term grey hat SEO was coined in analogy to computer hacking where black hats hack computers for malicious purposes while white hats hack them to test their security systems or install software updates.
Black Hat SEO:
While all search engine optimization is intended to improve a site’s position in search results, black hat techniques are sometimes used to artificially alter rankings or trick sites into placing well for certain keywords.
These methods usually generate a negative backlash from Google and other major search engines. Examples of black hat techniques include hidden text or links (called cloaking), spamdexing and link schemes that employ fake email addresses or content theft to obtain credit for referring traffic.
Because these methods violate search engine policies, they often result in site bans or being removed from page listings altogether.
However, there are ways to use these tactics ethically if you know what you’re doing.
Black hat SEO requires advanced knowledge of search algorithms and programming languages like PHP, HTML and JavaScript so it isn’t recommended unless you have extensive experience with website development already.
Final Words
Choosing one hat over another is all about weighing the consequences. For instance, if your business wants to rank number one for a few keywords so you get some extra customers through Adwords but your product isn’t ready for prime time yet, that’s not such a big deal. However, if you’re going after competitive keywords that are easy to rank for organically it makes more sense to go with white hat methods.