+91-9981949678
770 261 1353
020 4524 4226
SEO or search engine optimization has come a long way ever since it began its journey more than a decade ago. With time, the Internet became a household name helping people with information and helping in finding solutions to their queries. Today, businesses, irrespective of their industry type understand the significance of having their official websites to reach out to their potential clients and to maintain their public profile. Internet gained prominence with the evolving Internet craze. Today, the internet provides a viable option for marketers around the world to promote businesses and their offerings with credibility. Hence, marketing is not limited to just traditional billboards and hoardings now.
The World Wide Web provided a much-needed boost to your advertising, branding, and promotion activities with different mediums to ensure maximum visibility and exposure. This is where the significance of SEO came to the fore.
It is a combination of different techniques used by internet marketers to improve the ranking of websites on the SERPs and bring traffic so that sales are generated from leads. It helps to enhance the visibility of the website among the target audience.
Through methods like local SEO and off-page SEO, it is possible to improve the online ranking of a website so that more and more people visit them every day.
There are mainly 3 types of SEO : White Hat SEO, Gray Hat SEO, and Black Hat SEO.
Designing an SEO-friendly website begins right from this particular phase. The ideal way to do SEO for a site is white hat SEO.
What is it White Hat SEO?
As an organic method, it is ethical and an accurate way to do SEO for a website. It involves creating top-quality content for a website and building the best links so the audience can find value in it.
Using white hat SEO methods
It is always ideal to use white hat SEO methods that can enhance the reliability of the websites on search engines. Google can detect that a website is using black SEO methods if other search engines penalize a website. In such cases, Google can de-index the website, and it will not appear in the search engine result pages from then on.
Using high-quality content and links for a website
Website content should offer great value to site visitors. It should include links from reliable platforms. However, using spammy content and poor link-building schemes to generate traffic is not the best thing to do, as this can cause Google to ban the site.
Performing top-grade On-Page SEO
Every page should have unique and relevant titles and descriptions as this can help people to find the pages easily on Google as they look for specific keywords or something related to it. It is true for written content and images that may appear on the page. The keywords should be included within the text and in the titles.
White hat SEO takes a lot of time and effort, but it is worth it
SEO is a complex field with multiple factors in play and this sphere is constantly evolving with new trends coming up now and then. While some seem relevant and gain more exposure with time. You can only build a stable and successful business by investing in and practicing White Hat SEO methods. White Hat SEO involves organic means to improve rankings on search engines. Hence, it can take a lot of time and effort, and people not used to it can feel frustrated. Nevertheless, the best thing to do is follow the right white hat SEO guidelines so your brand image does not falter. If your business site gets banned or penalized by Google, it can cost you dearly in terms of reputation and money. Hence, you should only use White Hat SEO methods while optimizing your site. Spamming is strictly prohibited by Google. Make sure you choose SEO tactics that are effective and in compliance with the guidelines as stated by major search engines.
White hat SEO helps to build your brand and bring value to your users
Remember, it takes a long time to build a website that brings value to your end users. You will need to put a lot of time and effort into building your authority in your chosen field and see it as a reliable brand in the eyes of your target audience. You will face difficulties in maintaining focus while working towards your goals. To be successful with your SEO efforts, you must create content that ensures a great user experience and develops trust with your target audience. You will also need to work on your link-building strategy and maintain it consistently over time.
Even when your main goal is not to get traffic or earn money from search engines, you want readers for your content. Hence, you must create good content that offers value to your readers so they return for more.
At any cost, you do not want to be in a position where you spend time and money building your website and being destroyed by some algorithm update. There is no point in using black hat SEO methods, as they can be useful only for a short period. As soon as Google comes up with an update for its algorithm, the links made through black hat SEO methods disappear overnight, along with all your ranking, traffic, and revenue. That’s why it is crucial to always follow best practices and consider hiring top SEO companies to ensure long-term success. Hire Top SEO Companies 2024
What is it Gray Hat SEO?
This is an SEO practice cited between white and black hat SEO practices. While it is technically not something considered against the guidelines presented by Google, it still is. The truth is that there is a lot of controversy regarding Gray Hat SEO, and while some sources may say that it won’t be problematic for you, it is still a good idea to steer clear of it and only use white hat SEO.
Gray Hat SEO is often more difficult to detect and define than black hat SEO.
The unique thing about the Gray Hat SEO practices is that such practices can fetch results as White Hat SEO in one year. However, they can easily be deemed Black Hat SEO in the next.
For this reason, marketers must stay alert about best practices prescribed by Google and other search engines.
Staying safe is the first thing you should focus on rather than feeling sorry later. Getting penalized by Google can prove detrimental to your business reputation and financial success.
Examples of Gray Hat SEO That You Must Avoid
Designing an SEO-friendly website begins right from this particular phase. The ideal way to do SEO for a site is white hat SEO.
Guest blogging with the lower-quality sites
Guest blogging can be an ideal method to build your brand’s reputation, have more exposure, and boost organic traffic for your site. However, you need to be careful about the selection of websites. You must find the best blog sites for guest posts that too relevant to your business niche.
Never post on low-quality sites, as they will not help you when trying to secure your position as an authority within your industry. It may also adversely affect your credibility in the search engines. Choose blog sites where both parties benefit from the arrangement. The writer should have more readers for the content, while the host can have an expert comment from you or an outside source.
Do not simply come up with some pointless stuff. Instead, offer some useful tips and ideas about a topic based on your experience or the research that you have done about a particular topic. It will help the readers find value in what you have written.
Commenting on the blogs to obtain backlinks
You can search for blogs where you can post comments to generate backlinks. However, it is not the best way to generate backlinks to your site and can lead to problems.
Cold emails where you ask for backlinks
Many business owners have received emails from random, unknown people asking for links to their website or blog or vice versa. Such emails seem rather spammy and may eventually hurt the ranking of your website.
Other common techniques of gray hat SEO include:
- Cloaking
- Clickbait
- Link exchange
- Toxic backlinks
- Keyword stuffing
- Low/thin content
- Improper link building
- Multiple social media accounts
What is it Black Hat SEO?
Black Hat SEO is an unethical marketing technique that uses deceptive and unethical methods to improve a site’s search engine rankings. In some cases, the methods used are nothing short of illegal and can therefore lead to serious consequences for the site. A site that practices Black Hat SEO is said to violate the guidelines presented by Google’s Webmaster. Thus, any website that indulges in Black Hat SEO can be penalized by search engines.
For the longest time, Google has been penalizing websites for using Black Hat SEO methods in different ways. The penalties implemented by Google on sites using Black Hat SEO can be severe and even get a site banned permanently and completely. “Black Hat” is a term that describes a hacker that infiltrates networking systems and computers for illegal purposes.
This term is used frequently in computer security to describe hackers that seek advantage of network and computing vulnerabilities.
Do not simply come up with some pointless stuff. Instead, offer some useful tips and ideas about a topic based on your experience or the research that you have done about a particular topic. It will help the readers find value in what you have written.
Black Hat SEO Examples
Here is a look at some black hat SEO methods often used in the SEO industry.
Keyword Stuffing
Keyword stuffing is a technique where the same phrase or keyword is used multiple times in the content to increase the site rankings.
Article spinning
Article spinning involves taking an article from other sources, and rephrasing the content to publish on a site pretending it to be freshly written content to improve Google rankings.
Building links without permission
One of the unfair link-building practices involves creating links to websites for which one does not have the requisite permission from that website’s owner.
Cloaking
Cloaking occurs when a site demonstrates a different form of content to Google and other search engines than what people find when they visit the website. If the visitor finds a website with some content but gets a different idea while looking for it in Google, it is said to have been done with cloaking.
Toxic Backlinks
Toxic backlinks can damage Google rankings for a site that can be apparent to ordinary people who hardly have any knowledge of SEO operations. If anyone adds a website to their blog without permission, such link-building activities can only be deemed illegal.
Thin/Low-quality content
“Thin content”, also known as “Shallow content” or “Low-quality content” does not provide sufficient meaning and value to the site visitors. Such content is described as filler content with some low-quality links and keywords, but the information presented is hardly useful. They are low on substance, and in some cases, they can also contain duplicate content and are presented to poor-quality directories to ensure quick ranking. They may be optimized for keywords that hardly have a connection to the context for which they are used.
Some other types of SEO techniques fall under the Black Hat category, such as:
- Link farms
- Buying links
- Improper link building
- Fake reviews
- Buying reviews
- Duplicate / mirror site
- Page swapping
- Domain squatting
Avoiding penalties for Black Hat SEO by Google
Create a constructive SEO strategy that focuses on creating value for the site visitors instead of spamming the search engines. While black hat SEO tactics may provide some short-term gains. However, in the long run, it can cost dearly for the site owners to use such methods. Thus, sticking to white hat SEO techniques will be a wise decision to ensure a positive user experience.
Relevant keywords should be put in the headings throughout the text so that people can immediately find what they are looking for without putting in much effort.
Black Hat SEO methods do work only for a short period
Black hat SEO strategies can deliver fast results, but they last only for a short period. You can get good rankings for your website within the short term, and it can help you to build a reputation for your site easily.
However, the problem with black hat SEO is that the results would not last long term. The reason is that black hat SEO strategies do not create a top-notch user experience for site visitors, and it is the major reason Google ultimately chooses to penalize those sites. Using black hat SEO can also lead your site to be completely banned by Google.
Therefore, the best thing to do would be to steer clear of all black hat SEO tactics. While they may seem to be good and fruitful to you on an immediate basis, they won’t be providing you with any sustainable results. Google will eventually detect your poor content and spammy links and either ban or penalize your website in some way.
The factors that make Black Hat SEO ineffective in the long term
Plenty of business owners trying to obtain traffic to their sites and achieve quick financial success have contemplated this notion of using Black Hat SEO techniques at some point in time or the other. You may have even considered doing this yourself when you came across stories from others who successfully ranked their websites through black hat SEO. They may have done keyword stuffing on their content or bought links from other sources. Nevertheless, these methods are useless and extremely risky in the long run.
For instance, when you use spammy links, it can adversely impact your brand reputation in due course of time. If this happens to your site, it will be hard to recover your reputation even when you remove all the spammy links and create honest and authentic content. Thus, you must avoid black hat SEO methods from the beginning.
The other reason black hat SEO cannot provide you with the best results is that it is not scalable. As soon as Google learns about your black hat SEO strategy and removes all the pages from the search engine index, you would lose them forever. It means that all your backlinks are gone forever as well.
Your illegal strategies are going to be discovered at the end
Google can discover your spammy tactics at the end, and it will not end well for your site. Eventually, when Google or some other search engine discovers your spammy content and links, you will be at risk of getting penalized. Thus, you may lose your online rankings to your competitors that are sticking to white hat SEO methods.
Most people indulging in black hat SEO do not get that the algorithms created by Google are always learning and improving. Therefore, when more and more people use these algorithms, they get a better idea of detecting poor-quality content and sites.
Google always updates its algorithms to weed out poor-quality content sites. Hence, it is not possible for black hat SEO methods to win the game in the long run.
