Black Hat VS White Hat SEO
White Hat SEO
A white hat SEO strategy is one in which the techniques are applied to attempt to target an actual human audience or demographic, as opposed to targeting a search engine. This is seen as a long-term, more organic SEO strategy that yields lasting results.
If you’re trying to build a brand online, you should employ a white hat strategy when it comes to SEO simply due to the fact that it is safer than black hat SEO and is sustainable for a much longer period of time.
White hat and black hat seo or only a few of the common terms you should be familiar with when exploring seo. You should familiarize yourself with common seo terms to make sure you understand the process fully.
Some Strategies Used in White Hat SEO
- Doing keyword research
- Consistent analysis of each keyword’s performance
- Rewriting meta tags and H tags to garner more relevancy
- Backlinking
- Link building
- Writing and posting quality content on your website or blog
As you can likely tell, the white hat strategy can be time-consuming and requires a fair amount of labor. SEO has a rather large learning curve to it. Take the time, do the research, and implement strategies similar to what is listed above.
From there, monitor performance, adjust, and keep a record of what’s working and what isn’t. This time consuming and tedious process explains why SEO is not cheap.
Black Hat SEO
On the other end of the spectrum, a black hat SEO strategy seeks to rank higher in the search engines in a very short timeframe, and FOR a very short time frame. Additionally, a black hat SEO strategy focuses only on search engine results and typically does not consider user experience (demographic, conversions, etc).
This strategy is typically used by those that are looking to get a quick return on their site. The biggest downside to this strategy is that you may find yourself delisted on search engines altogether after have a penalty imposed on your site for violating terms of service.
Why you might as? It’s because the majority of the techniques black hat SEO strategists employ go against the search engine’s set of rules.
Some Strategies Used in Black Hat SEO
- Keyword stuffing
- Link farming
- Including hidden text and links on their site
- Spamming blog content
Doing any of the above will surely drive more traffic to your site, however, you should be extremely careful if you plan on deploying any of those strategies.
The possible consequences of using such strategies can lead to your site getting de-indexed (kind of like a penalty or warning) but using these strategies can also lead to your website getting permanently banned from being listed on a search engine. To learn more about his click here.
In most cases it is not beneficial in the long run to use any unethical strategies in the realm of search engine optimization. The potential reward is far too little for the risk taken.
If you’re genuinely interested in search engine optimization and want to go through the individual steps to optimize a website’s search engine ranking, you should pursue a white hat SEO strategy.
It is generally not advisable to implement a black hat SEO strategy on your website, but it is still good information to know as it outlines what NOT to do when creating a strategy to optimize a site’s search engine results ranking.
Search engine optimization is a rapidly growing marketing tactic, and even the experts are learning new things each and every day.
Don’t opt for a black hat SEO strategy. The quick return of traffic it will send to your site is NOT worth the risk of your site getting completely banned from any of the search engines.