White hat vs. Black hat SEO: Differences explained
You must implement ethical SEO strategies for your brand to rise to the top of the search engine results successfully.
However, there are also ways to take advantage of the search engine and cheat it by breaking the rules.
Learn more about White hat vs. Black hat SEO techniques in this guide.
White hat vs. Black hat SEO: Definition of terms
Let’s define bother techniques further:
What is white hat SEO?
White hat SEO is the practice of implementing techniques that follow Google’s guidelines and terms of service. These methods are clean and help boost a website’s traffic organically.
White hat SEO strategies help maintain the brand’s integrity while complying with the search engine’s terms and conditions.
White hat SEO strategies
Here are some of the many different white hat strategies to implement on your website:
High-quality content
Content is very important when it comes to search rankings. These articles are well-researched and give the reader valuable information.
In addition, they follow proper guidelines, such as answering the reader’s questions immediately and providing additional insights on the topic.
Organic link building
Link building is linking your website or article to other websites and having other sites link back to yours.
It is a process where fellow website runners can help each other gain traffic by linking to each other. Furthermore, it helps the readers gain more knowledge by clicking links related to their query.
Organic link building requires reaching out to site owners with the intention of collaborating and linking to and from high-authority sites, which are more reliable and credible.
User-friendliness
White hat SEO is all about maintaining user-friendliness. Since average people visit your site, you want the experience to be easy and hassle-free.
This includes writing high-quality, thoroughly researched content and creating a neat, easy-to-navigate website.
What is black hat SEO?
Black hat SEO is essentially the complete opposite of white hat SEO. These unethical practices involve breaking SERP rules and manipulating the search engine to gain traffic inorganically.
Black hat SEO strategies
Black hat SEO can take many forms as well. Here are some black hat SEO strategies to avoid:
Poorly written content
Black hat SEO has no regard for the quality of their content. Some black hat SEO users rush-publish their content, which, in turn, sacrifices the quality.
These articles are not well-researched, nor do they answer the users’ queries. There are cases when the content is too automated or even plagiarized.
Link farming
Link farming is the process of linking to several websites in an attempt to fool the search engine. The SERP may believe a site is credible because of the amount of links.
However, these links are from low-DR sites or link to irrelevant pages. This is done for the purpose of cheating your way to the top of the SERP.
Keyword stuffing
Keyword stuffing or spamming is unnecessarily repeating your target keyword in your content too many times.
These additional words do not add value to the content and keep the reader confused and overwhelmed with text.
Consequences of black hat SEO
Black hat SEO techniques will land you a penalty with Google’s terms and conditions, which results in a downgrade of your site.
In worse cases, your site may be permanently deindexed from Google, meaning it will never appear on the search engine.
You have a chance to rectify your site by fixing the mistakes. Rewrite your content, build backlinks naturally, and have the audience’s best interest in mind.
Outsource an SEO specialist with MVP Asia Pacific
SEO can be tricky. You might think you are doing something right, but it is actually the opposite.
It is best to hire SEO Specialist, and MVP can help you find professionals with expertise in SEO.
With a team of offshore SEO professionals,, it can help boost your website’s rankings using ethical, white hat practices.
Go to MVP Asia Pacific’s website to learn more about its services!
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