The idea comes from the old western films of the 1920s where the good character would wear a white hat and the bad, a black hat, to make it easy for the audience to tell who is who. The reference has been adopted by many industries since, with the term mostly used in security to describe various hackers. In more recent times, the coloured hats have been used by the SEO industry to depict advantageous and damaging methods of SEO.
What is White Hat SEO?
White hat SEO means following all the rules and search engine guidelines and using ethical practices to achieve results.
What is Black Hat SEO?
Black hat SEO uses more risky practices. Whilst these tactics often have better results, they violate search engine guidelines, which can mean severe penalties in the future.
But who decides? Going against Google’s guidelines doesn’t break the law. Although there is no governing to say what is good and bad, using tactics such as hacking can leave you with legal issues and is judged by SEO professionals as firmly against the search engine guidelines.
So what is good practice and bad practice in SEO?
That can only be interpreted by reading the rules on SEO from the search engines; they decide what should and shouldn’t be done on their platform. The intense algorithms have been carefully developed to penalise ‘bad’ manipulations and reward fair ones.
What does Google say?
Fortunately, Google is known for having one of the more clear set of guidelines, which is then used by SEO professionals, to judge what could land them in trouble. Google provides ‘Quality Guidelines’ that outline the most common deceptive SEO behaviours such as cloaking, doorway pages and scraped content. Websites found utilising such techniques have their website presence on the search engine lessened.
The key difference between white hat and black hat SEO is whether you are manipulating your website in the spirit of the guidelines.
What is Grey Hat SEO?
Well, it lies somewhere in between. It generally uses either white or black hat techniques that might be loopholes in the guidelines. However, due to the somewhat ambiguous practices, it crosses a blurred line and makes it difficult to know how it is viewed by search engines. What is clear is that those doing this aim to find new ways to manipulate the rankings; leaving the question open: is it working in the spirit of the guidelines?
While it may seem like there is an obvious distinction between white and black-hat SEO, in reality, most SEO tactics fall into the grey area. Without a doubt, black hat SEO comes with substantial risks; if you are working on someone else’s website and the owner does not fully understand the risks at hand, it is not acceptable to implement black hat techniques. When working on a site that is not yours, white hat SEO is the safest way forward, although you may be worried it won’t deliver the results you are looking for. Grey hat SEO offers a solution. When carefully planned, researched and completed, these middle-ground techniques are more likely to have an impact whilst avoiding the penalties of black hat practices.
At Essex Interactive, we believe SEO is always best left to the professionals. With the most up-to-date knowledge of the SEO industry and much experience in providing successful and safe techniques to other people’s websites, our services are the best way to increase your online presence. For more information about SEO from Essex Interactive, get in touch with our team today!