White Hat SEO VS Black Hat SEO

There are unlimited articles about the importance of SEO for all online businesses around the globe. You just need to search for “SEO Importance” on Google and you will end up with endless contents about the searched subject. There is no doubt about SEO importance, though there are different approaches to improve websites performance through the web.

There are two different approaches, when it comes to SEO; Black Hat versus White Hat.

The white and black basically come from the old western movies, where bad guys would wear black hats and good guys would wear white hats. The terms white hat and black hat are used here, for the purpose of good and bad SEO enhancement practices differentiation.

As a market participant, if you are an online business owner or even if you are an SEO consultant, you need to deeply understand the differences between these two kinds of practices, in order to avoid any action that might be identified as black hat SEO by major search engines. Otherwise, you will end up being penalized or even a temporary or permanent blockage on Google or other search engines.

What is Black Hat SEO?

In general, Black Hat SEO refers to any practice which is designed to manipulate a search engine in order to make it spot a website as a valuable website in terms of user experience, while it is not the case in reality. Black Hat SEO tactics, in contrast with White Hat, violate the search engines’ guidelines and regulations.

There are many practices that are categorised under Black Hat SEO that we will list some of them, down here for you, so you will have a clear mind to avoid using such tactics. However, you should bear in mind that the new Black Hat tactics will always be invented once the old ones are identified by search engines. Therefore, it is always a good idea for you as a business owner to work with a reputable and professional digital marketing service provider for the purpose of avoiding Black Hat SEO for your website.

Black Hat Techniques

• Buying Links

Valuable links can drive traffic through to your website, however buying such links is against Google’s regulations.

• Keyword Stuffing

Refers to filling the content of your website with many irrelevant keywords, for the purpose of being spotted by Google.

• Hidden irrelevant content

This is about filling the webpage with many keywords using font colour same as the background colour.

• Cloaking

To show a content to internet users and display another content to the search engine. 

• Duplicate Content

Simply means copy a content from a website and paste it in yours!

There are many other practices which are all banned by Google and other search engines, so you must be vigilant to not use them.

What is White Hat SEO?

In contrast with black hat SEO, white hat SEO refers to all practices, techniques and tactics which are in compliance with regulations and guidelines provided by Google or other search engines and are used to enhance websites’ ranking on search engines.

There are many advantages associated with utilising white hat practices to improve your website rank. The first and most important one is the cost! Even though you might be spending more by using white hat practices, rather than the black hat ones, in the long run, your marketing cost will be much lower due to your compliance with regulations. Besides, you will experience a steady growth rather than a sharp growth. Even though it is not a bad thing to grow sharply, doing so by breaking the rules will have severe consequences for your website in the future. Furthermore, using legal practices causes a steady and organic growth which will be very beneficial for your business from a user experience perspective. There are many other benefits for your business when using white hat SEO practices that makes it worthwhile to be complied with.

White Hat SEO Techniques 

• Quality Content

Users are looking for precise information on the internet. The more high quality content you create, the more users will be coming over to your website. The contents should be unique, relevant to your business and provide precise and detailed information about the product, service or topic that users are searching for.

• User Experience

The most important practice to improve website rankings is to improve user experience. Enhancing UX includes many topics such as designing a user-friendly website, mobile responsiveness, easy to navigate through the website, relevant colouring and fonts, website loading speed and many more factors to be utilised in order to get users’ attention and make them come back.

• Keywords

Relevant and smart keywords are essential for SEO. The keywords must be selected strategically to add the most value to your SEO campaign. The process of selecting the right keyword is not that simple, though it is mandatory for your SEO project success.

We tried to mention the most important practices to be used in order to experience a slow but organic and steady growth. 

You must keep in mind that the process of enhancing your website SEO is time consuming and complicated, due to the presence of many other competitors out there. Therefore, you must be patient and consistent. More importantly, working with a professional and reputable digital marketing firm would help a lot, due to the complicated nature of SEO service and difficulty of distinguishing the black hat practices from the white hat practices for normal users. You can check “SEO Pricing & Packages in Australia” if you want to find out more about white hat SEO services in Australia.