Do you know that doing SEO the wrong way can get your website penalized? Hi, this is your digital marketing friend, Digital Abhi. In this post, I will share the difference of Black Hat vs White Hat SEO. And the techniques you should avoid while doing SEO.
Also, if you are a video person, you can click here to watch the video. Or if you are quite busy, you can just listen to this content in podcast form.
Black Hat vs White Hat SEO
The terms Black Hat and White Hat originate from the techniques we use to do SEO. So, let’s start by understanding these types of SEO.
White hat SEO
If you don’t violate the rules and guidelines of the search engine in order to rank higher. Or if you practice all the ethical techniques and maintain the integrity of your website, then it is White Hat SEO. The white hat techniques are applied by keeping in mind the users. In this, we try to provide the best experience to our users.
So, what all comes under White Hat SEO? Basically, all the techniques which we have in the On-Page SEO, Off-Page SEO, and Technical SEO are a part of White Hat SEO.
Now, coming to the important part.
Black Hat SEO
When opposite to white hat, if you are breaking the rules of the search engines. Or if you are trying to please the algorithm by violating the terms and conditions, it is Black Hat SEO. Here instead of focusing on the human audience, you are focusing on the algorithm.
There’s also a third thing known as Gray Hat SEO. It is something which is neither Black Hat nor White Hat. Exchanging links is a famous example of Gray Hat.
One cannot surely say if Gray Hat techniques will negatively impact your website your not. So, to be on the safer side, you should avoid doing Gray Hat also.
5 Black Hat SEO Techniques You Need to Avoid
All the unethical techniques you can think of comes under Black Hat SEO. So, here I will discuss 5 techniques that are part of Black Hat.
1. Keyword Stuffing
The first one is the Keyword Stuffing. If you are unnecessarily putting keywords here and there in your content, thereby making it difficult to read, then it is called Keyword Stuffing. This technique used to work 5-10 years ago. But now it is something which we need to avoid.
For a healthy practice, we need to keep the keyword density within 1.5%. The Yoast SEO plugin can help you with that. You can also use synonyms of your focus keyword to make your content more readable.
2. Purchasing Links
The next Black Hat technique is Purchasing Links. We know that Backlinks play a very important role in the SEO of your website. But it doesn’t mean you should go on buying links for your website. If Google finds out that you are doing this, it will eventually hurt your website.
Link Building should be natural. In short, any artificial attempt to improve your rankings in the search engines will have a negative impact in the long run.
3. Cloaking
The next technique which you need to avoid is Cloaking. It is the process where you show one thing to the search engines and another to the users. This way you are basically misdirecting the users.
An example of cloaking is where you tell search engines that this page has HTML text. But instead of that, you are showing images to the users.
Feel free to use this comparison infographic on your website. Just copy-paste the code given below:
<p align="center"><a href='https://digitalabhi.com/what-is-seo/'><img src='http://digitalabhi.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/black-hat-vs-white-hat-infographic.png' alt='black hat vs white hat seo infograhic' width='540' border='0' /></a><br/><strong>Black Hat vs White Hat SEO<br/>Image Source: digitalabhi.com</strong></p>4. Wrongful Redirection
After that comes wrongful redirection. Generally redirecting is a very useful technique where you send users to some other page in case you have moved your page or changed its URL. Basically, it is used to enhance the user experience.
But sometimes people use it to send users to a totally irrelevant page. Or redirect them to some spammy website. And then it is called a wrongful redirection which is again a part of Black Hat SEO.
5. Hidden Text
And the last technique is using Hidden text. It is similar to cloaking. Here you make the color of the text the same as that of the background color of your page.
For example, if the background color of your page is white, then the text color is white or almost white. Another way of doing this is by making the text so small that it is almost impossible to see it.
Conclusion (Black Hat vs White Hat SEO)
So, you may be thinking that if Black Hat is bad, then why do people do it? It is because white hat SEO takes time. And they are looking for a shortcut or a quick and fast way to rank their websites. People think that by doing this they will be able to cheat the search engines.
But believe me, Google is much smarter than we think. If you are doing black hat, you will eventually see its negative impacts. And as a consequence of practicing unethical techniques, you may end up getting your website banned or penalized.
So, in short, I will never recommend you to do Black Hat SEO. Also, I have created a QnA snippet to help you quickly recap. I hope it helps.
What is White Hat SEO?
If you don’t violate the rules and guidelines of the search engine in order to rank higher and practice all the ethical techniques and maintain the integrity of your website, then it is White Hat SEO. These are applied by keeping in mind the users. In this, we try to provide the best experience to our users.
What is Black Hat SEO?
Contrary to white hat, if you are breaking the rules of the search engines or trying to please the algorithm by violating the terms and conditions, it is Black Hat SEO. Here instead of focusing on the human audience, you are focusing on the algorithm.
What are some Black Hat techniques?
1. Keywords Stuffing
2. Purchasing Links
3. Cloaking
4. Wrongful Redirection
5. Hidden Text
And if you want to grow your business with all the ethical and white hat techniques, contact me or shoot me an email at contact@digitalabhi.com.
So, that was all about Black Hat vs White Hat SEO. And the techniques you need to avoid while doing SEO. Thanks a lot for taking out time to read this post. I hope this episode added some value to your life. If it did, do hit the like button. Or if you have doubts, comments, or queries, you can let me know in the comments.
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