Daily Updated Website Optimisation And Search Engine Marketing News

A discussion of black hat and white hat SEO is as pointless as a discussion of the difference between black and white witchcraft. In witchcraft, the minute a technique is used to control the outcome of a situation it is known as black magic. The same can be said of SEO. A technique used to manipulate the search engines is known as black hat SEO. The problem is that white hat SEO does precisely the same thing so it is not any less “dirty” than black hat in some ways

An SEO tactic, technique or method is considered “White hat” if it conforms to the search engines’ guidelines and does not attempt to deceive it. White Hat SEO is not just about following guidelines, but is about ensuring that the content a search engine indexes and subsequently ranks is the same content a user will see.

White Hat advice is generally summed up as creating content for users, not for search engines, and then make that content easily accessible to their spiders. It is more about user friendliness and accessibility rather than about tilting the odds seriously in one’s favor.

Black hat” SEO employs more deceptive methods to try to improve search engine rankings. The search engines usually disapprove these methods. This can range from text that is “hidden”, either as text colored similar to the background or by redirecting users from a page that is built for search engines to one that is more human friendly. As a general rule, a method that sends a user to a page that was different to the page described in the search is called Black hat. Search engines can and do penalize sites they discover using black hat methods, either by reducing their rankings or eliminating their listings from their databases altogether. Such penalties can be applied either automatically by the search engines’ algorithms, or by a manual review of a site.

Search engine optimization is a very common term in the Internet marketing arena. I’m sure you’ve heard it tons of times, and you’ve also probably heard of White Hat SEO and Black Hat SEO. What search engine optimization really is, is a way to increase the amount of traffic that lands on your website.

Using proper search engine optimization techniques, any website can rank higher in a search engine’s search results page, for specific keywords and search terms that have been optimized for that website. When properly implemented, optimized websites have a competitive advantage over those that are not optimized, especially when dealing with crawler type search engines (such as Google).

Nonetheless, SEO has come under great scrutiny by the public, mainly because of the increased unethical manipulation of this technique. And for this reason, there exist the terms White Hat and Black Hat SEO. Black Hat SEO is simply SEO techniques used to trick search engines immorally. White Hat SEO, on the other hand, concentrates on using ethical techniques to improve a particular website in the hope of being able to rank higher in search engine page results.

White Hat SEO is the only way to go if you are trying to market your website and generate traffic, while avoiding being penalized by search engines for unethical techniques. The core of the White Hat SEO approach is honesty and quality content. With a concentration on simplifying the structure of your website, ensuring that all software and programming is simple and clear for search engines to crawl your website, search engines will be more willing to rank your website higher for your optimized keywords or search terms.

SEO is not difficult, but you must be careful not to use any of those dirty old tricks. Many search engines continuously update their algorithms to spot ethically optimized websites. Is it worth it to risk it all, banish your webpage from any search engine results using Black Hat SEO? The obvious answer is no.