There’s a lot to know about SEO and today we’ll be covering White Hat vs Black Hat SEO . But before we get started, make sure you know what is seo.
The Importance of SEO
SEO is extremely important for any website and there are many steps and factors to take in when doing it. This is why it can seem a bit overwhelming sometimes which is why most businesses opt to hire an SEO Company in Ireland to do the work for them. One thing to remember is that there is no “one way to do SEO”. Every website usually gets a slightly different SEO strategy depending on what their goals are for their website.
That being said there is a fine line between changing tactics to see what works best and manipulating search engines so that your website ranks higher. The names given for these two different types of SEO are White Hat and Black Hat SEO.
The Difference between White Hat and Black Hat SEO
It is important that you understand the difference between White Hat SEO and Black Hat SEO as having Black Hat SEO done to your website can result in severe punishments for your website. These punishments can range from ranking lower on search engines to even getting completely banned from them. This is why it is vital that you make sure that you get SEO done right on your website.
Black Hat SEO
Black Hat SEO is most commonly defined as, “a set of practices that are used to increase a site or page’s rank in search engines through means that violate the search engine’s terms of service.” To put this in simple terms it’s pretty much manipulating a search engines’ algorithm so that your website ranks higher. At first, your website might rank high on search engines but it won’t last long as the search engines will catch on and your site will receive a penalty. Below we have listed a few black hat SEO techniques that will almost certainly earn your website a penalty.
Keyword Stuffing
Keyword stuffing is when Black Hat SEOs stuff the content in their website with their target keywords to the point where their content is unnatural and out of context. Years ago this tactic may have worked however in today’s day, search engine algorithms are much smarter and can actually tell if the content on your website makes sense.
Hidden Text
Hidden Text is text that is either coloured to match the background of the webpage or when they change the font size of the text to 0. Black Hat SEOs do this so that the viewer does not see the text but the search engines do. Usually, this text is just full of keywords however yet again, any advanced search engine crawler will pick out this tactic and your website will be punished. Another problem with this tactic is that your website can often be graded on how readable the text is compared to the background, in which the text in this case would be unreadable thus giving your website a slightly lower ranking anyway.
Manipulative Links
As we know backlinks can be important for giving your website a higher domain authority and ranking your website higher. This strategy is when Black Hat SEOs put links in various places of their website while also using the hidden text technique so the user doesn’t see it. Again, any advanced crawler could tell a website is using this strategy and the website will be punished.
Violation of Guidelines
All of the strategies listed above violate Google and Bing’s Webmaster Guidelines and using these tactics should be avoided at all costs. If you spot or suspect another website using Black Hat SEO strategies, feel free to file a report on them.
One last takeaway from this is to make sure that you pick the right SEO Team to do your work for you. After all you wouldn’t want to invest your hard-earned money into something that’s not going to profit your business.
