White, Grey or Black SEO – Which Hat are You?
SEO is one of the key components to start a digital presence. There are different techniques that are used to improve Search Engine Optimisation. Each of these different techniques falls under different categories. These are known as hats or hats which are associated colours. The colours are white, grey and black. Local Brand Manager GeoGrid reports has said that SEO is an evolving trend in digital marketing.
Based on the information provided on this updated course for local SEO, white hats tend to produce results that last a long time, whereas black hats anticipate that their sites will eventually be banned once the search engines discover what they are doing.
Black Hat
Black Hat SEO refers to the use of aggressive SEO strategies, techniques and tactics that focus only on search engines and not a human audience. This usually does not obey search engine rules. Black hats are more frequently used by those who are looking for a quick financial return on their website. This is an alternative to having a long-term investment on their website.
Black Hat SEO Techniques:
Here are some techniques people use when they are using Black Hat SEO.
- Link Farms: a link farm is any group of websites that all hyperlinks to every other site in the group. Although some link farms can be created by hand, most are created through automated programs and services. A link farm is a form of spamming the index of a search engine.
- Blog Spam: Spam in blogs (also blog spam or comment spam) is a form of spamdexing. It is done by automatically posting random comments or promoting commercial services to blogs, wikis, guestbooks, or other publicly accessible online boards. Any web application that accepts and displays hyperlinks submitted by visitors may be a target.
- Scraping: Scraping is a black hat SEO technique, in which the spammer plagiarises content from other websites to put content that’s popular with search engines on his/her own site. This is often for the purpose of selling advertising back to the search engine.
Advantages of Black Hat Techniques:
- Archive Search
- Engine Rankings Fast
Disadvantages of Black Hat Techniques:
- Short-Term Strategy
- High-Risk Level
- Poor User Experience.
Grey Hat
In between black and white is the colour grey. The grey hat is the middle ground between the techniques which are used in the Black and White hat.
Grey Hat SEO Techniques:
Here are some techniques people use when they are using Grey Hat SEO.
- Three-Way Link Exchange: reciprocal links and link exchange has been the more widely used link-building practice for years until Google made it more difficult to devalue such links in its algorithm. Webmasters adapted quickly by engaging in so-called three-way link exchange.
- Buying Old Domains: Shady SEOs buy old domains with authority and backlinks and use them to link back to the other sites they want to rank well in the search engines.
- Article Spinning: This is a search engine optimisation technique by which webmasters post a unique version of relevant content on their sites. It works by rewriting existing articles, or parts of articles, and replacing elements t provide a slightly different perspective on the topic. Many article marketers believe that article spinning helps avoid the feared penalties in the Search Engine Results Pages (SERP) for using duplicated content. However, if the original articles are plagiarised from other websites or if the original article was used without the copyright owners’ permission, such copyright infringements can result in the writer facing serious legal consequences.
Advantages of Grey Hat Techniques:
- Good User Experience
- Achieve Search Engine Rankings in a Medium Timeframe
Disadvantages of Grey Hat Techniques:
- Medium Risk Involved
White Hat
White Hat SEO uses techniques and tactics which can be defended as NOT being contrary to the spirit of Google’s expressed quality desires. This is by citing Google’s own published guidelines. White Hats and their techniques are associated with ethical SEO. Even though websites which are using White Hat techniques might not suddenly pop up on the search results, they get long-lasting results when they finally do.
White Hat SEO Techniques:
Here are some techniques people use when they are using White Hat SEO.
- Guest Blogging: The process of writing a blog post for someone else’s blog is called guest blogging. The incentive for doing this is getting backlinks to increase the guest blogger’s site, and search engine rankings.
- Internal Linking: By far one of the easiest ways to stop your website from ranking well on the search engines is to make it difficult for search engines to find their way through it. Many sites use some form of script to enable fancy drop-down navigation, etc. Many of these scripts cannot be crawled by the search engines resulting in unindexed pages.
- Quality Content: The more content-rich your site is, the more valuable it will appear to the search engines, your human visitors, and to other webmasters who will be far more likely to link to your website. If they find you to be a solid resource on their subject. When creating good content, can be very time-consuming, however, it will be well worth the effort in the long run.
Advantages of White Hat Techniques:
- Long-Term Strategy
- Best User Experience
- No-Risk Involved
Disadvantages of White Hat Techniques:
- Achieve Search Engine Rankings in the Longest Timeframe
Written By: Amy Massey
If you require further help or enquiries regarding any of our services, don’t hesitate to contact Snob Monkey. We will be happy to answer any questions you may have.
Email: contactus@snobmonkey.com
Telephone: 0800 368 9336
