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White-Hat SEO VS Black-Hat SEO

If you talk to any freelance SEO expert for more than 5 minutes they will tell you this. Whilst the content and structure of your website should be optimized for search engines, the On page factors of keyword density, URL structure, internal linking and so forth can be seen as important yet simply technical aspects of SEO. Focusing purely on On page SEO tactics may improve the crawling of your site but it is not the quick-fix solution to improving your SERP rankings for your desired keywords. Thus, it is only with an effective Off page SEO strategy that acquires quality back links for your site that you can be sure to improve your rankings. However, with back links, quality far outstrips quantity in terms of results, and to ensure that you receive valuable, effective back links then you will need to follow the principles of what is known as White-Hat SEO.

What is White-Hat SEO?

White-Hat SEO refers to the acquisition of back links to your site through above the board, legal and organic methods, in a nutshell, links that have been generated from other sites that view the content on your website to be of a certain quality. White-Hat back links can range in their scope and include;

1. Link exchanges – the exchange of links between two sites based on a mutual appreciation of content
2. Guest Articles – procuring guest article places on other websites where you can share content but also obtain a backlink or two
3. Independent link creation – the natural sharing of your site through the blogosphere by other bloggers based on the strength of your content.

White-Hat vs. Black-Hat SEO

Black-Hat SEO refers to the practice of creating back links through inorganic and unnatural methods. Black-Hat methods include:

1. Creating back links through using automated link generators
2. Paying for links through a link farm,
3. Making thousands of forum comments and blog comments

Back links created through these methods are not highly valued by Google, and the vast majority of forums and blog comment sections alone are nofollow and thus any link created from these sites will not even be crawled by the search engine spiders back to your website in the first place. Moreover, even with forums and blogs that are follow, the main reason Black-Hat back links will not benefit your SERP results is because the idea of a backlink is that it is a genuine “vote” in the quality and content of your website. Thus any practice that acquires hundreds or thousands of links very quickly is likely to be seen as unnatural by Google.  How likely is it that thousands of different people from all over the world start linking to your website over the course of a few days? In extreme cases Black-Hat SEO can even lead to a penalty for your website, where Google forcibly decreases your SERP results.

Posted on Sep 14, 2011
Category: Web Design | SEO | Wodpress Development | SEM | Web Development |

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