When it comes to learning the basics of SEO, there is a right way to do it, and there is a wrong way – White Hat SEO vs Black Hat SEO.
White hat SEO is a method that search engines such as Google suggest as an acceptable approach whereas black hat SEO are techniques that search engines do not approve of.
A quick example of this would be keyword stuffing – in the olden days of Google, a blog could repeatedly overuse a specific keyword and it would actually get them ranked.
Today – Google is much smarter than that, using a plethora of KPIs (key performance indicators) to uncover which domain is truly deserving of the first page.
Black hat SEO procedures will most likely result in getting a website to rank very well originally, however, the domain will ultimately suffer a shadow ban or complete ban once search engines discover what they are “pulling”.
For this reason alone – you should focus on white hat SEO. Play the long game – we promise the results will pay off.
When we hold a microscope under the two different types of SEO the one thing that stands out is that White hat SEO caters to the users – whereas black hat is focused on fooling search engines.
With Google and Bing consistently improving and optimizing their own algorithms it will essentially be impossible for you to stay updated after using black hat growth hack methods.
Any and all content on your website should be catered to assist crawlers – not fool them. Whether you’d like to think it or not – you are not smarter than Google.
Therefore – to be safe, make sure to use clean “Google approved” content here. Although it can be tempting to purchase backlinks – it will only hurt you in the long run.
Search engines like Google and Bing put a high value on relevancy. Giving users not only what they want, where they want it but giving them a “safe” website to navigate on is music to all search engines’ ears.
Black hat methods typically concern techniques where webmasters try to quickly improve SERP rankings that are disliked by search engines – this method usually involves deception.
One of the most common techniques black-hat SEO marketers have used in the past is “white text”. Why? Because the users will not see it – but the search engines will.
For example, let’s say you were writing an article about Google Ads, what if you added keywords after every paragraph – in between them – as well as in the margins?
Well, Google is going to think you have this amazing article at first and rank you favorably.
Another familiar process is known as” cloaking” – this is when a domain loads a separate page pivoting on whether the page is being viewed by another human or just a search engine crawler.
Google will punish websites that employ black hat SEO methods, this is done either by decreasing their organic rankings or removing them from SERPs altogether.
Like we stated before – play the long game. It is not worth the quick victory to have your website banned (or shadow banned) from a search engine.
Think about it – where should Google rank a brand new blog/article over something that has been receiving honest clicks for some time? There is no quick way to the top here.