The acronym SEO stands for search engine optimization. It includes redesigning your website or making changes to the content to make it more attractive to a search engine, in hopes that your site will show up as a top result. Simply, SEO is meant to drive targeted traffic to your website from a search engines results page.
About 70% of all traffic comes from search engines, so you need to place high if you want to generate more clicks and increase the number of visitors to your page in the process, and this is exactly what search engine optimization helps you do.
White hat, black hat, and gray hat are the three types of SEO. Although all these different approaches can work, there should be a distinction between the right and wrong way to do search engine optimization. It is important to have a clear understanding of the most ethical and effective ways to generate traffic without putting your business and reputation at risk. So let’s take a look at what differentiates white hat from a black hat and what would be the best approach for you to take.
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White Hat SEO
They are also simply referred to as SEO since they use techniques that Google approves of. Following these guidelines is not only ethical but will ensure a long and lasting impact on your rankings too.
White hats primarily focus on people rather than on search engines and take a long term approach to optimization. They avoid tricks for improving search engine results and avoid deceiving visitors at all costs. They eliminate the risk of penalization and include tactics like providing helpful content, increasing page loading time, improving user experience, and factors like using keywords, attracting backlinks, and many more. For more information, you can visit this website.
Black Hat SEO
Although the guidelines are a bit general and vague when it comes to the right strategies to use, they are much more direct when talking about the ones you should not be using.
Black hat SEO uses shortcuts and hacks to trick search engines and benefits from any weaknesses in their algorithms. Their focus is primarily on search bots, not users, and using this technique puts you at a high risk of being penalized. Methods that can lead to consequences include using automatically generated content or creating pages that have little to no reading material, using hidden texts and links, overusing keywords or loading the page with irrelevant ones, deceitful doorways, and others.
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Possible Penalties
Offending sites are punished individually, so if you notice a sudden drop in traffic, this might be a sign of a possible penalty. The most lenient one could be solved by simply fixing the issues you were notified about and penalized for, and although your search ranking might drop temporarily, you will be able to gain it back once you deal with the problem.
More seriously, once a search engine changes its algorithms to get rid of any questionable SEO behavior, many sites that use black hat tactics to gain high rankings simply disappear. This can have a serious effect on your visibility and traffic, so you would want to avoid it. Fixing your behavior might be the best solution.
The most severe penalty is being banned or excluded from search results completely. You will completely lose traffic and your website will become unsearchable, so you should consider diverting to white hat tactics immediately.
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Conclusion
You might often come across the debate on white hat vs. black hat, but you shouldn’t let anyone persuade you that there is a better SEO technique than the white hat one. Although black hat strategies might ensure quick wins, they are more likely to earn you penalties, than achieve positive results. White hat tactics might take a long term approach, but they enable you to make a lasting, positive effect on your search visibility.
