You may have heard the terms white hat and black hat SEO. These two practices could not be further apart in their techniques. White hat refers to good methods for improving a website’s SEO. This is done through rich, well-written content, a robust site, and a design that appeals to visitors. Black hat SEO refers to employing practices of deception solely to improve a website’s listings in the search engines. This can be repeating keywords throughout a page in a nonsensical fashion or disguising the keywords with the background so that this isn’t obvious to a visitor. These tactics are known as keyword stuffing.
As you can imagine, the search engines frown upon the deceptive practices for SEO known as black hat. If a website is found to be employing these methods, they risk being banned from the search engine altogether.
The Dangers of Black Hat SEO Practices
Black hat SEO focuses a website’s efforts solely on the search engines with little to no regard for the huma audience. Some of the most common techniques seen in black hat SEO practices are keyword stuffing, hidden text, hidden links, with little regard to the user’s experience when visiting the website. This is often focused on short-term goals, generating traffic to a website with little regard to the visitor’s experience once they have arrived. This type of focus, designed solely to manipulate the website’s standings in the search results, in frowned upon by Google and other search engines
The search engines focus on returning the best results to ensure that the user’s experience is a favorable one. When delivering websites that have little regard for the visitor, with their sole focus on search results, you can imagine what that experience will be like. When these practices are discovered by the search engines, depending on the severity of the offense the website may be banned from the search engine completely.
Focus Efforts on White Hat SEO
White hat SEO is considered the ethical and honorable approach to search engine optimization. Websites practicing white hat techniques focus on a healthy balance of search engine optimization, while also ensuring that the visitor’s experience is a positive one. This means developing content that is well-written and speaks to your target market, while still being rich with keywords that will be most pertinent to the search engines. Other white hat SEO techniques include quality links to other sites and content that is relevant to your audience with a focus on the human experience.
Over the years many websites have made the mistake of falling for the quick promise of black hat SEO, paying the price for this shortcut in the user experience and at a cost in their relationship with the top search engines. It is best to keep your search engine optimization practices as an extension of your website, as opposed to the sole focus. This way visitors to your site will continue to feel engaged by the content and design that speaks to this human audience.
