In the world of search engine optimization (SEO), things can get pretty fierce and competitive. Because websites are constantly vying for the top spots in search engine results pages (SERP), there are various methods employed to ensure these good rankings. SEO encompasses many disciplines in terms of techniques; however, these strategies can easily be grouped under two classifications: white hat SEO and black hat SEO.
What is the difference between these two, besides their choice of color? If you would recall black and white cowboy movies of yesteryear, actors had to wear contrasting colors of hats for viewers to easily determine the “good guys” from the “bad guys.” In this same regard, white hat SEO refers to the set of good practices and ethical techniques, while black hat SEO is rather unconventional and generally unacceptable under the terms and conditions of many search engines.
Of course, if you want to remain in good standing with your search engines, then white hat SEO is a must. This ensures that your site will be kept in the index of Yahoo, Google, MSN, and the like. However, at times when some web developers and website owners become desperate to get good page ranks in SERPs, black hat SEO becomes their weapon of choice. This can be risky move, as many SEO experts say. Because major search engines already have technologies to detect black hat SEO, they can remove a site from the indexes. In a way, a site is totally banned from getting listed in the SERP.
It can be easy to understand which SEO methods are considered as white hat. You can find out more about this if you read the terms and conditions or submission rules of the search engines you want to get listed on. Like Google, Yahoo specifically states the do’s and don’ts for web developers who want to establish themselves through the search engine. To sum it up, white hat SEO does not intend to fool website visitors or search engine bots. White hat SEO is employed to make a website more visible, and at the same time remaining relevant to web surfers and the search engine spiders that index them.
Moving on to black hat SEO, mentioned here are some of the common practices that some developers think they can get away with. For one thing, keyword stuffing is an example. Some keywords are repeated several times in the content, making it non-sensible to the reader. Some would stuff their HTML codes tags full of keywords, too. At times, keywords can be repeated in the content as hidden text, blending in with the background, or behind graphics and images so that human eyes can’t detect them.
Creating gateway pages and redirecting spiders and internet surfers to sites they do not want to see is also a big no-no in SEO. This is perhaps one black hat SEO method that is commonly reported to Google and Yahoo by concerned internet users, having these sites banned in the process. Remember, there is no need to use black hat when you can stick with the white hat methods and still have effective SEO.
