SEO Looks Better in a White Hat

Adopting a search engine marketing strategy that follows guidelines set forth by Google, Yahoo!, and Bing is often referred to as ‘White Hat SEO’. On the flip side, ‘Black Hat SEO’ includes practices that search engines strongly disapprove of, and actively work against. In this article, we’ll cover the following: 

• Top Black Hat SEO techniques
• White Hat SEO techniques
• Why White Hat SEO is better

What are the Top Black Hat SEO Practices?

If the term “black hat” conjures up scenes from old westerns, you’re on the right track. These methods run the gamut from mere rule bending to outright deception. Some popular tactics include:

• Keyword Stuffing involves cluttering the content and Meta tags of pages with excessive keyword words or phrases. The most common example is repeating a keyword phrase excessively for ranking purposes only.
• Doorway Pages are fake, high-ranking pages that quickly redirect you to a completely different site. Creating a template and deploying multiple pages with keywords that all direct back to one site is how doorway pages work.
• Hidden Content is invisible to the reader where words and phrases are placed for ranking purposes only; they are typically keywords that can’t be seen such as zero font size or white on white type.
• Linking Schemes are designed to manipulate the number of back links to a site in ways that are frowned upon by most search engines. Examples include:

1. 1. Link buying: paying for links with no acknowledgement
   2. Using automation to insert links into public forums
   3. Paying workers to search the web and add links
   4. Distributing content to be posted on 3^rd party sites without using “no follow” tags.

• Content Scraping uses technology to take content from reputable sites and repost it on another site without adding additional value. It is inappropriate to take content from other sources without crediting the source. This practice also gets into plagiarism and potential copyright infringement.

Black Hat SEO in totality may increase page rankings in the short term but at the expense of the user experience. It is also a risky strategy that can backfire as there have been many high-profile instances of Google delisting a site because of these tactics.

White Hat SEO

White Hat SEO techniques focus on helping those searching for information, products and services to find valuable content that relates to the purpose of their search. Here are some highly effective White Hat web development processes that DesignWorks and other reputable web marketing firms use to get results over time.

• • Creating original, high quality web content
  • Link building to relevant and reputable sites by understanding your audience and interacting with others organically
  • Researching and optimizing keywords to reflect the way people search for information
  • Optimizing and coding sites with meaningful text, reasonable links and an accurate site map
  • Analyzing site performance (speed, site errors) and catering content and the user experience to better align with historical user behavior

Working against Google and Bing may deliver short-term gains, but the penalties can be high. Instead, we at DesignWorks follow the above recommendations to ensure long-term success. Ultimately, those same initiatives will provide a better user experience, and that’s where major ROI starts to kick in. We can work with your business to implement a web marketing strategy focused on White Hat strategy. Check out our recent blog Guide to Generating Quality Web Content for more tips for online marketing. Or reach out to get started today.