White Hat SEO VS Gray Hat SEO VS Black Hat SEO
NextVee Enterprises Pvt Ltd., an SEO agency provides a full guide about White hat SEO VS Gray hat SEO VS Black hat SEO
What is Gray hat SEO?
As you have discovered, the core meaning of White Hat SEO is a collection of tactics to increase the rankings of a website on keywords, while not breaking any rules set by search engines. Generally, white hat SEO refers to any practices that increase your search rankings in a search engine results page (SERP) while maintaining the integrity of your website and staying within the terms of service of a search engine. White hat SEO (sometimes known as ethical SEO) is typically considered to be a long-term investment into your site, and although initial rankings can take longer to climb, search rankings results will be seen for a very long time. We found that white-hat SEO generally increases search rankings over the long term, as does improving site visitor quality.
White Hat SEO means applying techniques that increase the website’s search ranking, not relying on tricks that subvert search engine algorithms. White hat SEO refers to using optimization SEO tactics and strategies that are focused more on human audiences than search engines, and fully comply with search engines’ rules and policies. There are plenty of compelling reasons to use white-hat SEO strategies versus black-hat SEO, but this does not mean simply following the rules is all it takes. While black hat SEO techniques can fool search engines and boost search engine page rankings for sites using them, search engines do frown upon using such techniques.
While black hat SEO techniques once promised a surefire boost in traffic for websites from search engines, white hat SEO is disappointingly slow to get working and relies on standards that Google and other search engines are highly secretive about. White hat SEO strategies focused on providing readers with quality, relevant content that optimized the user’s experience, instead of using more spammy techniques such as duplicate content that was optimized just for search engines. Because white hat SEO involves investing in content that will produce results in the years ahead and using tactics that will not expose you to the consequences of Google, white hat is a longer-term approach. In simplest terms, it is using different techniques to make sure that your website is performing well in SERPs, without resorting to what is basically called “cheating” by a lot of people these days.
While black-hat SEO can allow some site owners to get a quick win, it is in direct violation of Google’s guidelines, relies on manipulative tactics, and is ultimately far more likely to get you penalized rather than the results you are looking for. White hat, on the other hand, uses organic techniques and requires quality on the site in order to make sure that it is performing well for search. If you have noticed that some websites and brands are ranking in SERPs for a lot of different keywords, and wondered how they keep holding these positions, chances are that they have earned Google’s trust and authority through years of hard work using white hat SEO strategies.
Features of White hat SEO
- Fresh Relevant Content
- Linking to / Getting Links from Relevant Industry Sources
- Optimizing Image Labels
- Relevant Page Titles and Tags
- Natural Keyword Density
- Perfect Grammar and Spelling
- Standard Compliant HTML
What is Gray hat SEO?
Before you begin using gray hat SEO techniques to improve the rankings of your site, understand first what is White, Black, and Greyhat SEO. Grey hat SEO, as its name suggests, is a middle ground between white and black hat, because its techniques are vague (like a black hat) and its terms of service are either non-conforming to the terms of services of the search engines or contradicting them.
Grey hat SEO is an SEO practice that is riskier than white hat SEO, but it can result in the banning of your website from search engines and their affiliated sites. Grey Hat SEO is a tactic that is either currently White or Black Hat, but due to changes to how search engines operate, it could be the other in the future. Yes, there are black hat, white hat, and grey hat SEO techniques that can be used to rank well on Google.
While trying grey hat techniques to SEO your site can be risky, professionals can find a way to find a balance. This is where gray hat SEO techniques and this article comes into play, delivering the traffic boost and rankings that may otherwise lack with white hat SEO, at minimal risk of getting caught by Google’s search algorithms.
Although Grey Hat SEO crosses the White Hat/Black Hat split because of its intent to manipulate the search results, it pays dividends and is not a direct violation of the Webmaster Guidelines. Grey hat techniques primarily revolve around link-building strategies and SEO techniques for driving more traffic to a site, which is not strictly against Google’s guidelines but walk a fine line. What I am saying is that, when applied to specific SEO techniques, labeling as Gray Hat is not only inaccurate, it gives a faux legitimacy to these borderline techniques, placing them in between black and white extremities.
I believe that the SEO community needs to move away from the Grey Hat? tag, and instead refer to these techniques in something like the Weak Black Hat?, in contrast to the Strong Black Hat of malicious cloaking, link farms, sniped content, and so on. Black Hat techniques are about fooling users and search engines in order to get rankings, while not providing any lasting value, and possibly harming a customer. Building microsites in order to build links to the main website falls into gray-hat SEO techniques, and when done correctly, it can provide a great deal of search engine visibility as well as high-quality backlinks to your main website, all without cheating Googles guidelines. The title of this article may make you question how digital marketing and SEO have anything to do with the hat.
Features of Gray hat SEO
- Developing Ineffective Content
- Using Expired Domains
- Buying Links
- Building Backlinks using Hosted Blogging Platforms
- Purchasing Reviews
- Cloaking
Black-hat SEO represents any activity that seeks to manipulate rules and best practices set forth by Google themselves (or even Bing) to get better rankings. Black Hat SEO is a type of unprincipled SEO tactic used to illegally increase a website’s ranking on search engine results pages (SERPs) or to degrade a competitor’s site’s rankings. Instead of earning the right to rank high in the search engine results pages, black hat SEO uses deceptive tactics to get you there. Oftentimes, those practicing black hat SEO are doing it knowing full well they are breaking search engines’ terms of use, yet continue using their tactics anyway as they are seeing fast results.
Using a sneaky, underhanded technique to increase rankings, known as black hat SEO tactics, may lead to penalties by search engines. The number one reason to NOT use black hat SEO tactics is that it ultimately results in the loss of your site’s search rankings, visibility, and traffic. While SEO is about increasing your site’s organic visibility and traffic, black hat tactics may actually cause the reverse of that. Well, black hat SEOs adapt their tactics because they may positively impact the ranking of a website or webpage in the search results, even though it is frowned upon by Google and other search engines.
As you will find out, the main point of black hat SEO is the use of specific tactics that break the guidelines of the search engines in order to boost the site’s rankings on search engine results pages. This is the black hat SEO practice of using software to create automated searches of specific keywords in order to get the site ranked higher on the search results. Cloaking is a violation of Google’s webmaster guidelines as Cloaking is a deceptive technique that tricks the search engines into giving desired rankings to targeted keywords, whilst giving users results different from what they expected. While black-hat SEO tactics are not nearly as common use as they used to be, there are still SEOs that take this route or lead businesses to believe that it is being marketed in an ethical way, when, in fact, the techniques being used are blatant violations of Googles guidelines.
With help from a skilled optimization company, it is possible to create a flourishing online business, but for those using unethical optimization techniques, the chances of getting a Google black hat SEO penalty are increasing every single update. If you are caught using shady SEO techniques, not only do you receive a manual Google penalty, but you also make it harder for your site to rank in search engine results pages unless you are going all-in. While you might achieve a few limited, short-term successes, such as rankings boosts or site traffic, some limited success will be short-lived, since Google may go as far as to de-index you for using spammy, unethical SEO tactics. Wherever possible, you will want to stick with the techniques that are white-hat SEO instead and achieve a proper SERP ranking.
Features of Black hat SEO
- Duplicate Content
- Keywords Stuffing
- Link Farming
- Cloaking Text
- Redirecting Another site or Page
- Blog Comment Spam
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