Given the fierce competitions businesses need to face in this digital era, there are a lot of techniques companies employ to get themselves to rank higher on Google search results. Some follow the search engine rules, some break them and some just draws outside the line a little.

If there is any topic that rumbles the SEO world it’s Black Hat vs White Hat. Whether you are experienced with SEO techniques or just dipping your toes in the SEO world, the significance of understanding the implications and techniques of each approach cannot be ignored. Here we will discuss the fundamental differences between Black Hat SEO and White Hat SEO, the techniques you would want to approach and the methods you should be avoided at all cost.

White Hat SEO

What is White Hat SEO?

White Hat SEO is, simply put, playing by the rules and following the SEO guidelines set by Google webmaster. It’s the ethical way to get ahead of the competition in search rankings. The primary objective of White Hat SEO is to increase organic search rankings defined by the search engines. White hat SEO does not violate any of these guidelines and is the safest and risk-free way of getting to a better rank position. There is no manipulation and no underhanded strategies used here.

What Makes White Hat SEO Important

Firstly, if you engage in SEO practices other than white hat SEO, you can potentially get your website banned from search engines. Keep this in mind that search engines like Google are used by literally billions of people every day, and each of those visits is an opportunity for your website to get discovered. Being a potent source of traffic to your website you simply CANNOT risk being banned on Google.

Is White Hat SEO Worth it?

Absolutely! White Hat SEO practices are the safest way to build an ethical and successful SEO campaign, with the added benefit of garnering trust in your visitors and potential customers. Don’t get too worried if it doesn’t immediately yield results. The benefits of white hat SEO are long-term.

White Hat Techniques

It’s not a surprise that White Hat SEO techniques revolve around users. Any SEO campaign should implement a “user first, search engine second” approach. Your site’s value and relevance to your users should always be at the forefront when approaching SEO.

A few notable examples of white hat SEO include:

Relevant contents that address users’ need. Offering high-quality content that is focused on meeting your visitor’s needs. It must be relevant. It must help them solve a problem. Use SEO keyword research tools to determine the keywords that fit your audience’s topic.

Using descriptive, keyword-rich meta tags Meta tags such as site title and descriptions are the first things Google’s robots read when determining what the page is about. So make your meta titles/page titles relevant and descriptive.

Prioritise UX. User Experience should always prioritise. Make sure your website is structured properly backed up by a well documented Information Architecture and User-flow. Don’t display unnecessary elements on the site. Make the site seem approachable so that it doesn’t overwhelm a first-time visitor.

Mobile-Friendly Browsing on mobile phones to find what users are looking for has increased substantially over the years. Making your site mobile-friendly is one of the most important aspects of white hat SEO. Make sure the texts aren’t too small to read or the CTA actions do not impose on the actual content.

Backlinks Get high authority sites to link back to your sites. This only happens when you have high-quality and relevant content. You need to be careful here though, low-quality backlinks might affect your site ranking negatively.

Utilise Schema Markup Google approved Schema plays a huge role in determining the quality of search results. This allows you to see the little rich snippets you see below some search results. The possibilities are endless, however, you need to make sure you follow the strict markups found at Schema.org.

Black Hat SEO

What is Black Hat SEO?

The term Black Hat SEO is referred to as the techniques that breach Google Webmaster Guidelines. The concept of black hat SEO is commonly referred to as tactics to dodge the search engine principles to manipulate search results.

Unlike White Hat SEO, using Black Hat SEO techniques can yield quick improvements in ranking. However, they are usually short-lived and more importantly have a negative impact on the quality of Google search results. It’s very risky. Google regularly updates its search algorithms to tackle and penalise the websites adopting these spammy tactics, often by completely removing the site from Google’s search index.

Black hat SEO practices almost always end up with penalties from Google. Such penalties include a reduction in search visibility and even complete removal from Google’s index (sometimes permanently).

Black Hat SEO Techniques

First thing first, Google are very competent at identifying spammy SEO techniques. Ten years ago webmasters and agencies were using these tactics to rank faster. However, gradually the effectiveness of Black Hat SEO is losing its significance. Remember, the manipulative techniques below violate search engine guidelines and offer no value for the users. They are used solely to cheat the system, so steer clear of them.

Cloaking

Cloaking is a technique where the content presented to search engine crawlers is different from that presented to users to manipulate ranking for a particular keyword or topic.

Bridge Pages

A technique often used by spammers, bridge pages or gateway pages are put in place to trick the search engines to send users to different destinations than originally intended. These low-value pages include minimal or no search intent.

Link Farms

This black hat SEO technique involves unlawful traffic generation to your site by getting particular platforms designated to bring websites together. This is a common practice of unnatural link building, and the practitioners can be immediately penalised if caught.

Duplicate Content

As the term implies, duplicate content represents the conventional “copy and paste” of contents available elsewhere on the internet. Having duplicate contents confuses Google on which one should be ranked, and ultimately effects ranking for both the sites.

Article Spinning

Artificial spinning is classic plagiarism, and it is being practised at a large scale by web-optimisers and content creators. It involves rephrasing of the copied content through specialised software. This is clear negligence of SEO guidelines and can get you banned on Google results.

Keyword Stuffing and over optimising

Keyword stuffing is when someone stuffs a page with the same or similar target term in hopes of ranking higher in search engines. It used to be immensely popular a few years ago, however, its effectiveness has decreased significantly. It is now considered a strictly black-hat tactic.

Hidden Text

Hiding links and texts on web pages in your content to manipulate Google results is seen as violating guidelines set by search engines. Techniques such as using white text on white background, locating texts behind images, using CSS to place texts outside the screen should be avoided at all cost.

The core difference between black hat and white hat SEO is whether you are working in the spirit of the search engines’ guidelines.

What is Grey Hat SEO

Now, this is where most industry experts and SEO agency’s opinions seem to differ. Some might say Grey Hat SEO is ethical and safe whereas some might be completely on the opposite spectrum and believe its breaking search engine guidelines. Just ask Google what Grey Hat SEO is. All the results shown will have a muddy mixture of definitions. It’s a blurred line between White and Black Hat SEO.

Simply put, Grey Hat SEO is enhancing your search engine ranking by finding and exploiting a loophole in the search engine’s algorithm. That isn’t against the rules, but since you’re basing it on a loophole in the code, the next update may put an end to your show and wipe your gains.

An Example of Grey Hat SEO

We all know link building plays a major role in optimising a website’s search ranking. Creating valuable contents that other websites link to is the very first cornerstone in SEO link building, however, nowadays you can pay other sites to link to your website to gain link juice. Now, this doesn’t directly violate Google’s guidelines, but certainly does fall under the great area.

Understandably, it can be frustrating when a spammy website suddenly started appearing above you on search results regardless of your ethical efforts on your SEO. We have seen it plenty of times, but every time that gain has been short-lived. Google is good at spotting spams, so stay true to yourself, it’s not a matter of if Google will spot these spam but when; and once you do you will regain your rightful position in search engine rankings.

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SEO for small businesses isn’t really tricky. Though it is important to keep it in mind that search engines are constantly evolving, so something that worked for you last year might not work for you today or next month. We always suggest and use White Hat SEO approach, since it is the only 100% risk-free set of techniques that don’t cause any guideline violations.