White Hat vs. Black Hat SEO: Why You Need to Understand the Difference

Bruce Thede

In the world of digital marketing, search engine optimization (SEO) is a powerful tool to help your site gain visibility, drive traffic, and generate sales for your business.

With more than 1.8 billion websites in the world, you have to do everything you can to set yourself apart from the competition.

SEO is a great way to do that.

These strategies include numerous techniques to attract audience attention and earn higher search engine rankings from keyword matches and backlinks to meaningful content and a user-friendly interface.

Despite the many ways to optimize your website development, SEO falls into two major categories: white hat vs. black hat SEO.

To be sure you’re maximizing your SEO efforts, it’s essential to understand these two approaches and how they differ.

What is White Hat vs. Black Hat SEO?

When we think of white hat vs. black hat SEO, we can think of old western movies when the good cowboys wore the white hats, and the bad guys wore the black hats.

White hat SEO is the ethical approach to website optimization and generally follows three criteria:

It doesn’t deceive Google’s algorithms: Google has established a set of guidelines for proper website optimization. Essentially, they maintain that ethical SEO strategies aren’t manipulative. As long as your SEO plan isn’t trying to deceive their algorithm, you’re adhering to white hat SEO standards.
Focuses on users: Rather than optimizing keywords and content strictly for rankings, your SEO strategy focuses on providing users with the best experience possible. Delivering up-to-date, valuable content on a site with fast load times makes the user journey more enjoyable.
Has a lasting effect: To create content that users will appreciate takes time and resources, but the payoff is worth it. Investing in the user experience has a longer-lasting effect, both in your audience retention and in gaining steady SERPs.

Black hat SEO, on the other hand, are strategies for website optimization that are not considered ethical and include SEO techniques that:

Violate Google’s guidelines: They distinctly go against Google’s policies by using tactics search engines state you shouldn’t incorporate into your SEO strategy, such as keyword stuffing.
Use manipulation: Rather than focus on the user experience, black hat SEO tries to outsmart Google’s algorithms to gain higher rankings. Black hat SEO is considered any manipulation tactic used to trick Google into perceiving a site as more valuable than it is.
Have a short shelf-life: Manipulating the system will only work for so long. Google is constantly updating its algorithms to ensure they’re providing users with the best solutions possible. A site that doesn’t provide value will be discovered soon enough and will lose its ranking at that time.

Examples of White Hat and Black Hat SEO

White hat and black hat SEO aim to gain higher search ranking placement, but they’re trying to achieve this goal in two opposite ways.

White hat SEO techniques focus on creating a positive user experience, while black hat SEO is all about beating the system.

Because their approach is so different, it’s easy to identify the tactics of each method.

White Hat SEO Examples

Examples of ethical SEO that meets Google’s guidelines include:

Blog posts that deliver relevant content to the target audience.
Images with alt text that give a clear description of what viewers are seeing.
Active links that take readers to valuable and reliable resources.
Copy that follows basic grammar/spelling/punctuation rules.
Page titles that are unique and relevant to the subject matter.

White hat SEO techniques provide users with transparency, avoid deception, and provide value to their needs.

Black Hat SEO Examples

Examples of unethical SEO that goes against Google’s guidelines include:

Repetitive content that is found in several places on a website.
Tons of keywords are crammed into the content without any care as to their relevancy or context.
Sending a user to another webpage without warning.
Poor quality links that take readers to content that is irrelevant to the subject matter.

Black hat SEO techniques are sneaky, deceptive, and not in the best interest of the user.

There are three major opportunities for keyword optimization in web design:

Meta tags: Excerpts of text that tell search engines what the content is about. These should include your focus keyword and key phrases.
Meta title: Search engines use this to display a page in their results listings. It should use your focus keyword and consist of 50-60 characters.
Meta description: A Brief summary that appears in search engine results. This should be long enough to entice people to read your content, but not so long it’s truncated by Google. Aim for 50-160 characters.

Knowing how and where to incorporate keywords in these three ways helps search engines accurately assess your web pages.

"As a digital marketing professional, I use best practices to develop an SEO strategy that builds your audience, drives sales, and earns high search rankings."

Let's Develop A White Hat SEO Strategy!

What is Grey Hat SEO?

Grey hat SEO tactics fall somewhere in the middle of white hat and black hat SEO practices.

Typically, they’re techniques that could be viewed as manipulative, but aren’t clearly defined as such by Google’s guidelines.

Grey hat SEO might include using link directories or building doorway pages, tactics that are geared toward rankings rather than providing users with valuable information.

Although they’re less risky than black hat SEO techniques, grey hat SEO can still have negative consequences.

Consequences of Black Hat and Grey Hat SEO

If you choose to employ black hat or grey hat SEO, there are three main consequences you could face:

Drop in rankings: When Google updates their algorithms, your site will likely be labeled as irrelevant or of no value to your audience, resulting in a drop in page ranking.
Manual penalties: Google’s human reviewers will flag your site as a violator of their policies. While a drop in rankings just bumps your website further down the list, manual penalties can keep you from showing up on the list at all.
Lose viewer trust: When people realize your information isn’t focused on their needs and experience, they’ll stop turning to your website for any content. Not only that, they’ll likely spread the word to their own contacts that you should be avoided. This keeps you from growing your business, closing sales, and generating revenue.

For all the effort of manipulating search engine algorithms and the risks involved, it makes more sense to invest that time and energy into practicing white hat SEO tactics. They’ll earn you a loyal following, generate quality leads, and help increase your conversion rates. White hat SEO will also be rewarded by search engines who place you higher in their rankings.

Incorporate White Hat SEO Practices in Your Strategy

In the white hat vs. black hat seo discussion, white hat SEO ensures you’re building a reputable brand that people can trust.

As a digital marketing professional, I use best practices to develop an SEO strategy that builds your audience, drives sales, and earns high search rankings.

Contact me today to discuss white hat SEO techniques that can help set your business apart from the competition.