Black Hat SEO vs White Hat SEO

Do you know what kind of SEO techniques are used you? It can be hard to know where to begin with the optimization of search engines since most experts have an opinion on what works and what does not work. They could offer you short-term results if you use black hat SEO techniques, but that doesn’t mean they’re going to set you up for a solid future.

You will assist in your long-term SEO objectives by learning the difference between Black hat SEO vs. SEO’s Whitehat and the Gray in between.

White Hat SEO: Google’s Golden Child

Basically, white hat SEO does search engine optimization exactly the way Google wants you to. It follows Google’s guidelines and develops a long-term game plan that will withstand any Google update.

High-Quality Content Created for the User

The one thing that you want to concentrate on if you are actively doing SEO is high-quality content. Why? Why? Because, no matter what else you do, you will not rank well if you don’t have content that people want to read and share.

It is also the cornerstone of SEO’s white hat, black hat SEO, which does not focus on the quality of content. You create pretty amazing content in Google’s proper location, it refers to all Google Rules, and people read it and post it like crazy. That’s the gist of the SEO white hat.

You are already leaving the realm of white hat SEO if you are not creating great content if you are writing for search engines and do not care what your viewers see.

This category also falls under user experience. This doesn’t create a good user experience if your content is difficult to read (let’s say your user is on a cell phone and your content is not formatted for mobile use) or takes forever to load. It reduces quality. And the chances of high ranking in the search engines will be reduced.

It’s okay to understand what keywords your users are looking for and use those keywords in your content, but it can quickly turn into keyword stuffing, which is SEO black hat.

Help Google Find and Understand Your Site

Now, is the amazing content sufficient? No! No! If Google has a problem viewing your page that will result in ranking problems.

You want to make sure your website is indexable (you can use your robot.txt to tell Google which pages you want it to crawl and which ones you don’t). And Google can properly crawl your website, and all your important pages have a proper sitemap.

Using the Google Search Console to upload your sitemap is an excellent idea to see if your website has any problems crawling.

White Hat SEO vs. Black Hat SEO

Black hat SEO is about breaking all the rules, unlike white hat SEO. And certainly, depending on what method you are using, it might work at first, but it is more of a short-term strategy. Google updates its algorithm quite frequently, and if you do something you know will eventually get you into trouble, well, then it’s most likely going to!

Most of the black hat techniques don’t work anymore and doing them will only hurt your ranking chances. But sometimes it’s also good to know what not to do, so let’s go over them.

Hidden text — Don’t think that by making the text of certain words match the website’s background, you are tricking Google. This worked in the distant past. The ugly, clunky text couldn’t be seen by people, but Google could and would rank these sites. But Google caught on quickly.

Cloaking — This is when the HTML that appears for the visitor, and the HTML that appears for the Google bot, are different for websites. For a while, it worked because some sites needed to show what was on the website to search engines.

Steal Content — This can appear as duplicate content, too. If you see a great article somewhere, then don’t think you’re the first one who ever thought, “Oh, if I publish this on my site, then my site will rank too!”. Google will recognize your deception. This is why getting unique content is so important!

Automatic Article Spinning — Maybe you’re thinking, “Ok, what if I don’t steal the content but just change the words to synonyms, making most of the new content unique? For a time, individuals would use automatic programs in an article (spinning) to change words to create, post, and then rank unique content. It would have similar keywords, similar meaning, and may rank higher for websites that generated a lot of “new” content. The content, however, did not read very well, and it was very similar to the original article and offered nothing new or unique.

Link Farms — This is when all link to each other on a bunch of websites. Links are a big signal to Google that others are interested in your content, so this used to work. But now, with a backlink profile that is not natural-looking, it is easy to get caught.

Purchasing Links — It’s still being sold by people. ‘Buy X amount of X dollar links! ” Don’t do that. Most likely, the links aren’t of good quality, and if you’re a newbie, you’re more likely than your rankings to waste your money!

Negative SEO — Okay, this isn’t the technique of a black hat per se, but it belongs in the same category what if we were to buy some bad links for my website? That will surely hurt their ranking, which is going to help me by default, right? All right, what if I buy some bad links from my competitor? That’s sure to hurt their ranking, which will help me by default, right? Hey, no. Again, you are just wasting your time and money (and also being pretty mean!).

Now, in a black and white world, we don’t always live. What about this SEO Gray hat that falls in between, somewhere?

Major Differences

Compliance: Black Hat SEO includes techniques that search engines consider unethical, while White Hat SEO techniques conform to regulations and do not involve deception.

Approval: All search engines approve White Hat SEO, while Black Hat does not.

Consequence: The result of engaging in Black Hat SEO is that lower rankings, de-indexed, and may even be banned can penalize the website, and these penalties last for a long time.

Methods: Where the techniques are included in the White Hat SEO, such as the research, quality content, analysis, web design, and the relevant meta tags. Black Hat SEO methods include spam for blog commenting, link farming, stuffing of keywords, hidden links, and cloaked pages.

One has to wonder why, when the penalties imposed are so serious, individuals continue to insist on using Black Hat SEO.

The answer lies in each technique’s perceived effectiveness. It is generally agreed that it takes a long time for White Hat techniques to actually deliver results and that is why people are tempted to use riskier techniques.

Negative SEO, Panda, and Penguin.

Google uses many algorithms — Updates are made regularly and to make search results as relevant, authentic, and spam-free as possible.

• The Google Panda update, looks at quality website content, rewarding high-quality websites and low-quality websites. Moreover, since it has been released, it is not only individual pages that are penalized for low quality, but the ranking of the entire website is affected.
• It seeks out Black Hat SEO techniques in the Google Penguin update, in particular, penalizing thousands since its launch for using link farms to accumulate a host of bad links. Website owners, however, cannot always control who provides their pages with a link. The Penguin update definitely took the entire SEO world by storm, but all the good SEO companies (like us!) were very well received.

All things considered, even if you have to wait a while before your website shows up near the top of SERPs, you might want to stick to White Hat SEO.