Are you struggling to attract visitors to your website? In need of better SEO but not sure what efforts you should invest in, especially when it comes to white hat vs black hat?
In this article, we’re covering the ins-and-outs of white hat and black SEO practices. After reading, you’ll be able to decide which of these two SEO options will benefit your business the most.
What Is SEO?
SEO, or search engine optimization, is the practice of increasing traffic to your website through organic search results. It encompasses all of the technical and creative elements needed to improve your website’s ranking and general awareness of your website in search engines. Because the majority of web traffic comes through commercial search engines like Google and Yahoo!, it’s incredibly important for you to have good SEO so people actually find your website.
Without good SEO, your website will be buried deep within search results, and customers won’t be able to find it.
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White Hat Vs Black Hat
SEO techniques are generally broken into two categories: the techniques that search engines recommend, and the techniques that break those techniques to earn higher rankings. In order to pick the best one for your business, you need to know the difference between the two categories of SEO: white hat and black hat.
White Hat SEO
White Hat SEO uses approved SEO strategies like quality content and organic content to make your website more visible. This means creating content that is helpful, original, relevant and useful to your target audience. Valuable content organically makes your content more share-worthy and link-worthy, so that people will more easily find it.
White Hat SEO is also focused on effective keyword research and use. People who use white hat SEO take the time to research the keywords most relevant to their target audience, or phrases they’re most likely to enter into their search engine.
Another important element of white hat SEO is relevant backlinks, which are links on other websites that link back to yours. These off-site links are relevant and offer the same kind of content your audience is looking for. Excellent internal links and quality meta descriptions are also an essential part of the white hat SEO strategy.
Black Hat SEO
Black hat SEO is primarily about driving inorganic traffic to your website with an emphasis on the search engine and not the people actually searching. It’s often used by websites that are looking for immediate gratification rather than long-term results.
A big part of black hat SEO is injecting keywords unrelated to the content to bait search engines. People utilizing this SEO strategy also generally stuff keywords into their meta tags and content to optimize their results or stick hidden text that is readable by search engines but not actual site visitors.
Black hat SEO also involves doorway pages which are pages stuffed with keywords that automatically redirect visitors once they land on it. Websites may also use cloaking, a strategy that involves showing visitors and search engines completely different content to boost rankings.
Which SEO Strategy Is Better?
While black hat SEO can drive immediate traffic to your website, it can undermine your greater efforts. Websites that are caught using black hat techniques are often banned or penalized with a lower rank.
That’s why it’s better to use white hat SEO. It may take longer to get results, but you’ll win favor with Google and have a better chance at staying higher in rankings. You’ll also be able to clearly tell which of your SEO strategies are working, and how you can adjust to improve your traffic.
Final Thoughts on SEO Strategies
When it comes to SEO, the key to success is knowing the ins-and-outs of SEO strategies, like white hat vs black hat SEO. Knowing the when and where of how to use these two techniques will help you choose the best SEO for your business.
Interested in learning more about SEO? Check out our SEO tips to boost your site’s rankings!