White Hat SEO vs. Black Hat SEO: What is the Difference?

Quality over quantity is a good gesture for life, and it is also the key to SEO. With all the complex strategies that come with practicing effective Search Engine Optimization, it can seem overwhelming to figure out what should be prioritized. Let’s set one thing straight – there is no golden technique with SEO. In fact, everyone practices it slightly differently depending on what works best for their website and brand. It always said, there is a visible difference between doing work around with tactics that work for your website, and other by manipulating search engine algorithms to up your rankings in search engine.

So in this blog, you’ll get to know the differences between white hat and black hat SEO, and also we discuss some of the strategies involved in these SEO.

In later part we’ll also discuss a less known middle category that is Grey hat SEO.

What is White Hat SEO?

White hat SEO is a technical and aesthetic practices that an individual or group of individuals employ in the attempt to improve search engine results for a website or group of websites. White hat SEO describes the bulk of SEO best practices by reputable companies.

White hat SEO specialists take Google’s quality guidelines, and from other search engines, they optimize a website for both human purposes and search engine algorithm purposes.

White Hat SEO Techniques

White hat SEO starts with an analysis of a website and its competitors. The final work is to find gaps and issues with the sign that your site is sending to search engines. The SEO work is to fix these issues so that search engines and users find your site useful for their purposes. It is the game of all about keyword or a set of keywords for which you’re trying to rank.

Here are a few primary white hat techniques:

  • Content Optimization

Content optimization is all about creating new content and revising or may replacing old content to attract a target audience. Search engines register the increase in relevant, authoritative, and quality content, rewarding your site accordingly.

  • Technical SEO

Technical SEO depends on website’s meta-structure, internal links, tags, and keyword that determine its technical merit. An SEO specialist evaluates any technical issues and chances for improvement. Sites that enhance their technical merit with time experience a immediate boost in the SERPs.

  • Link Building

Link building is done to sharing useful and relevant content in compare to other websites. Google and other alike search engines look positively at relevant links that help direct users to what they’re looking for from resource pages and blog posts. When search engines see these links sending signals from authoritative external websites, it can result in a bump in rankings.

What is Black Hat SEO?

Black hat SEO is a completely illegal or unethical practices that attempt to improve search engine results for a website or group of websites. It gain your website short-term ranking on search result page and also done by taking advantage of gaps, limitations, or blind spots in search engine algorithms.

Black Hat SEO Techniques

These practices change with time as search engines become strict to black hat techniques. Here are some of the most common techniques.

  • Keyword Stuffing

Keyword stuffing work as creating web pages and its content with an excessive amount of keywords in the attempt to send amplified keyword signals to search engines. This is supposed to make the website rank well for the keywords.

  • Hiding Keywords

Hiding keywords is similar to keyword stuffing, work as changing the colour of a text’s font to make it invisible to human eyes. The invisible keywords are supposed to fool a search engine into giving the web page and the site to which it belongs a good ranking in search engines.

  • Spamming Links in Comment Fields and Forum Posts

The internet is a network of hyperlinks. It is done in a way to manipulate search engines with links, black hat SEO practitioners have been known to insert links to web pages in comment fields of blog posts and on forums, believing these links will send positive signals to search engines.

  • Link Schemes

It work against search engine Webmaster Guidelines, use of automated programs to build links to a website, offering someone a free product in exchange for a positive review and a link, and excessive link exchanges.

  • Misleading Redirects

If a web page is outdated or broken, a webmaster may redirect the user to a different page. A misleading redirect sends the user to a page where they see content different than what a search engine’s web crawler can read.

  • Auto Content/Scraped Content

This is content created by a bot that is oftentimes gibberish, with the intent to fool search engines.

  • Cloaking

Cloaking very similar to misleading redirects, it involves showing different content to the user than to the search engine bots.   

What is the key difference between white hat SEO and black hat SEO?

The difference between black hat SEO and white hat SEO has to do with the techniques used when trying to improve a website’s search engine ranking.

Black hat SEO refers to techniques and strategies used to get higher search rankings, and breaking search engine rules. Black hat SEO mainly focus on search engines and not much on human audience. It is used by those who are looking for a near-immediate return on their site, rather than going with long-term investment. Result of black hat SEO can possibly in your site being banned from a search engine and de-indexed as a penalization for using unethical techniques.

White hat SEO done to the use of techniques and strategies that target a human audience in an organic way opposed to a search engine. Techniques practise in white hat SEO include using keywords, and keyword analysis, doing research, rewriting Meta tags in order for them to be more relevant, backlinking, link building as well as writing content for human readers. White hat SEO is more like a long-term investment on the website, as the results is may take time but it surely last for long time. White hat SEO concentrates on organic, evergreen strategies that increase your rankings over time. This isn’t a quick win, but it’s a big win; white hat SEO is a way of cooperating with search engines and users who want to experience the value of your website, product, or service.

Black Hat SEO and Google Algorithm Updates

In time Google controls over 90 percent of the search engine market share, Google search engine is one of most used search engine. So that black hat SEO tactics are primarily aimed at manipulating Google. Initially, this was a problem for Google until the search engine giant released the Penguin algorithm update in 2012.

This update took into account manipulative tactics and introduced an algorithm to punish websites that were engaging in black hat SEO. If you were the webmaster or SEO specialist for a website that was using black hat tactics in April 2012, you experienced a sea change when Penguin knocked your web pages out of sight. Suddenly, traffic dropped and revenue tanked.

How Black Hat SEO Hurts Websites?

Websites that engage in black hat SEO may suffer several types of penalties:

  • Algorithm deprioritization

Once Google’s algorithms crawl the website and register the signals other websites are sending to it, the website can experience a significant drop in rankings, meaning it’s essentially buried in Google’s list SERPs.

  • Black listing

If a website rank up with black hat SEO practices are particularly egregious, Google can take the step to completely remove it from the index forever and that website will never gain rank again in search result page

If you’re planning to take SEO services, there are some red flags to identify potential black hat SEO companies. These red flags include:

  • They won’t clearly explain what they doing for you for rank up.
  • Promising thousands of links over a short period of time.
  • Will claim to have a relationship with Google, guarantee #1 rankings.

Why White Hat SEO Is Worth the Time?

White hat SEO is worth the time and money for multiple reasons.

You can feel great about what you’re offering to the user. It all depends on presentation of website where everything is clearly marked and organized, and well-stocked, and salespeople are friendly and informative without any complication.

White hat SEO sets you up for success and a solid ROI in the long term. This strategy doesn’t try to manipulate Google’s search algorithm, it actually boosts your website for future algorithm changes. If your site is sending the right signals, the inevitable algorithm changes will result in a better ranking. In last if your website grow your business is automatically grow with time.

The bottom line: stick to white hat tactics

White hat SEO takes time and it requires time, true effort, and often money to achieve a delightful results of your website. In moment you might be distract to look for black hat shortcuts to speed up the process, But when it comes down to it, the risks simply aren’t worth the potential rewards.

Invest in a white hat SEO and you’ll be much more successful in the long term — without having to worry about algorithm updates or potential penalties.

Thank you !!

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