White Hat SEO vs. Black Hat SEO

We are in the digital age, and everything brick, and mortar is totally converting to click or keeping side with both. But where the onus lies is the fight for relevance on just a page for the whole world to see. Unlike the traditional means of advertising, it’s easy to compete in the digital age. The chances of competing is only limited by the amount of your creative ability and authority in the niche you want to dominate.

SEO (searching engine optimization) has become the order for organic visibility on search engines. Weighing with a lot of metrics that businesses use to compete to find relevance and get seen on the web. The reality of white hat or Blackhat now depends on what each business perceives as ethical or non-ethical, the amount of funds they have, and how desperate they are in the fight for relevance and sales. 

As they say, ethicality is relative. Although not a topic for today, the reality is that businesses deploy several tools to stay afloat in the face of competition. Like a warfare, it’s the observers that make the verdict while the players simple fight within the ambit of their strength and resources. 

So is with Black and White Hat SEO.

Instead of casting our verdict, we will just say what it is, their features, and possibly what you stand to get or lose from each of the SEO methods.

White Hat SEO 

White hat SEO simply means that you're doing the exact thing that search engines require from you i.e. following the rules. Search engines usually have a set of rules that they are following in ranking websites in their database. Some of them include the domain authority, quality of content and content authority etc. If you follow these rules without trying to cheat the system, you will be said to be a White Hat SEO expert.

Black hat SEO

On the other hand, if you cheat the system to rank on search engines, you will confusing the search engine spiders and you will be using Black Hat SEO techniques. Some of these techniques include keyword stuffing, using Private Blog Networks (PBNs), low quality content, plagiarized contents etc. By so doing, you may be confusing the ranking algorithm and you will be using the Black Hat SEO technique.

Which method gets better results? 

You can well achieve accelerated results with Black Hat SEO Technique than White Hat SEO technique. But the dark side is that it’s not sustainable and would require more work in the long run than white hat technique. It may even damage your reputation because it’s not consumer friendly like white hat SEO which is both consumer friendly and machine friendly.

Components of White and Black Hat SEO techniques

White Hat SEO Techniques 

Successful companies choose white hat SEO techniques because Google, being the most popular search engine frown at sites that overtly are bent on black hat SEO techniques. You may even be banned from getting indexed on Google and this will repeal the traffic history of your site. Below are some tips you should deploy if you want to use the White Hat SEO technique.

• Write high-quality content. Ensure that your website contents are unique. Avoid mass-produced contents that are duplicated all over the web.  can be easily found on several other websites. Don't be obsessed with rankings, write quality content that solve problems.

• Pay attention to your meta description. Also, pay attention to your meta description. A meta description is like a call to action. It should be short and compelling and should (if possible) contain your primary keyword.

• Perform relevant keyword research. Be strategic and clear about the keyword you wish to write about and ensure your content sufficiently optimizes for it. To ensure you over stuff your content with keyword, you should use Yoast SEO plugin to keep yourself within the limits.

• Keep page URLs short, concise and ensure you include your keywords in your links. 

Black Hat SEO Techniques

Internet marketers who uses the black hat SEO technique rely on breaking the rules to rank higher, and although this can be effective, you can end up having your website penalized. Nevertheless, here are some activities of Black Hat SEO pratitioners.

• Add Unrelated Keywords to Bait Searchers. Many business owners use this tactic to draw traffic knowing fully well that it is unethical. Developers and marketers try to maneuver their way buy imputing highly searched but less competitive keywords to get traffic. Adding keywords that are not relevant to your website looks unnatural to search engines. 

• Hiding text or links within content may get some sorts of results. To use this Blackhat technique, since search engines only prefer moderate amount of keyword within your content, to add more than the required amount, users of Blackhat tricks would match the text color with the page background color to avoid it been seen by users but would encourage ranking each time people search for that keyword.