Choosing the Right Hat SEO
Ranking your website on the search engine is a task. And thus the need for an excellent SEO professional is huge. It’s important to note that every SEO professional has their own opinion about the techniques to use for optimization. No doubt some may disagree vehemently about the tactics you use, but as stated above, everyone has their own opinion. As the colors of the types of search engine optimization suggest, there are huge differences in the approach and long-term results of every optimization technique. Though every type of SEO has their set of advantages and disadvantages, most companies and websites with long-term, stable, and sustainable goals will tend to stay away from the dark-colored variety.
White Hat SEO
When all the search engine optimization techniques are compiled in accordance with Google’s Webmaster guidelines, makes them fall into the category of White Hat. Search engine results that appear as a result of approved methods, rather than payment or trickery, are referred to as organic search results. Since ads cover major portion, the portion of visible search results dedicated to organic results is limited, so top placements are very desirable for everyone.
Tactics for White Hat Optimization:
- Ensuring that the title and URL include important and relevant keywords.
- Adding sufficient relevant keywords to content on the page (no keyword stuffing).
- Adding links and buttons to let a reader know more about the site.
- Featuring links to social media accounts and interacting with users in those accounts.
- Posting interactive and relevant video content.
Advantages:
- Costing: In the long run, white hat SEO is cheaper than Black Hat SEO, as being penalized by Google for unethical techniques would cost more.
- Security: Sites optimized with white hat SEO are secure against Google Penalties.
- Consistency: The Rankings achieved are usually more stable and, in particular, long-term compared to pages optimized with unfair means, with the probability of penalties.
Although White Hat SEO is known as pure SEO but it has got its own issues, the first being limited scope. Also, it is time-consuming and somewhat complex. It is important to know that white hat SEO brings steady, gradual, but lasting growth in rankings.
Black Hat SEO
Think before using this technique as the site can even be removed from the index of a search engine if found using black hat tactics. So can we say that these tactics are bad? Not until you use them wisely!
Tactics for Black Hat Optimization are:
- Cloaking is to deceive the search engine crawlers into displaying a page when it would otherwise not have been displayed.
- Every website has a certain focus and natural density of words that are related to the business. However, when keywords are stuffed illogically and unnecessarily, just to get search engine rankings, it is considered as keyword stuffing by search engines.
- Many organizations put keywords in the same color as the page’s background. By doing this, the content is not visible to a normal visitor to the site but is picked up by search engine spiders.
- Putting invisible links in order to increase link popularity
Lower quality sites tend to not to meet as many points on the search engine algorithm, so they tend to use fewer white or gray hat techniques and lean toward the black hat where a site with great content, code, design, user base, time on site metrics, internal links will be able to rank without risking penalty, so they will generally stay on the lighter side of life.
Advantages:
- may lead to a boost in SERPS
- earn short-term money but a huge money
But the risk is always high for Black Hat SEO. If a small business owner is looking for a way to boost traffic, they should stay on the safe side and never touch black hat SEO tactics.
Gray Hat SEO
Gray hat search engine optimization is recognized by affordable pricing, since the search engine optimization company has to reduce cost by resorting to other SEO techniques in order to deliver results, instead of spending on activities that are considered White. As the name suggests, Gray Hat SEO practices belong in neither the Black Hat nor White Hat category.
Tactics for Gray Hat SEO:
- Purchasing old domains
- Link buying
- Social media automation and purchasing followers
- Redesign your website at regular interval say for reviews
If done by someone with excellent skills and a lot of experience, it will appear natural and the site will seem to have acquired its algorithm weights naturally.
If you are not careful, this can appear to slip into black hat SEO.
