White Hat SEO vs Black Hat SEO

[wrockca]

I am looking for an some feedback on a topic I could not answer completely.

:D

The question was what is the difference from White Hat vs. Black and the ways that internet marketers work within. When a optimizer looks at its competition in the search engine for a certain term, an he or she learns what the algo likes from those websites, and the optimize adjusts the website to gain better results in the SERP's.

How is that looked at and why?

White hat SEO is still adjusting a website to fit a specific algo.

I know that black hat SEO's use techniques that are against the terms of service to inflate traffic but what are the boundaries and what are the differences between both techniques?

I look forward to hearing your opinion......

Thanks :cool:

[RyanSmith]

I personally feel that "Black Hat" consists of any tactic that drives visitors to your site that won't benefit from the content on your site. If you using tactics to get people to your site (even if they may be questionable) if those people will benefit from the content of your site and will be happy they visited, then I consider it "White Hat". But that's just my opinion.

[wrockca]

I agree, Very Good Point Ryan.. Thanks

The search engines are changing daily with new updates as they work to filter out the Black Hat techniques. My fear is what is the search engine looking for exactly as they spider to deem the most relevant site.

I look forward to hearing other opinions. Thanks Guys

[SEOforGoogle1]

Black Hat SEO is a term the search engines love to use.

Basically, a search engine would consider anything "Black Hat" that is deceptive to the search engine, and filling up it's index with repeated content.

However, as a user, I could care less how a site got a top ranking. As long as I get to what I was looking for, I am happy.

And if you're really good at "Black Hat", not only will the user never know, but neither will the search engines.

Anything built by a human has flaws, and we use machines to exploit those flaws and make $$$.

[ltcobretti]

The truth is that you shouldn't do a lot of work to get people to come to your site (SEO) and not give them a reason to come back. That is free traffic, and not so hard to do if you shop your site's KW's. Black hat seems to be scraper sites and using lots of 301 redirects to keep bumping huge crappy sites into the results, although 301 redirects are a popular SEO method. Look at: apexbattery.com

[JONES]

Two sites both providing equally informative and important stuff to their traffic, but one using genuine ways to get high ranks and other using spam to get high rank, then in such case... the former is White Hat and latter is Black Hat respectively.
[QUOTE=SEOforGoogle1]And if you're really good at "Black Hat", not only will the user never know, but neither will the search engines.[/QUOTE]
I don't agree with this point, as user who can also be your competitor and an optimizer can get to know that you are using Black Hat techniques... and if they choose to report to SEs you can aftermath get penalised, no matter how smart you are.
Prefer to get smarter with White Hat Techniques. That is something playing safe.

[Sonja]

[QUOTE=RyanSmith]I personally feel that "Black Hat" consists of any tactic that drives visitors to your site that won't benefit from the content on your site. If you using tactics to get people to your site (even if they may be questionable) if those people will benefit from the content of your site and will be happy they visited, then I consider it "White Hat". But that's just my opinion.[/QUOTE]

Ryan is Right!! I mean whatever you do against SEs guidelines is Black Hat SEO and remaining is offcourse white hat!!

[seo auliya]

In my opinion, anything that is deceptive to the Search Engines and/or the end user is Black Hat SEO. That includes mirror sites and redirects and hidden links etc. Not all redirects are black hat, i don't know enough about them to say they are. I know some people use redirects in a good way, to steer end users to the right page after your site has changed, etc. But redirects like a site that says its for horses, and then once clicked on it send you to a page about something completely unrelated, that is definitely black hat. Just my 2 cents.

[amitd]

Thanks All for explaining White Hat and Black Hat SEO.
Till now i haven't used any balck hat and perhaps will never use.
!!! Enjoy !!!

[Dustin07]

There are very few true White Hat SEO's out there. A friend of mine running a web hosting company is probably just about the only one that I know of. The rest are quickly taking to the term 'grey hat'.

Black hat is basically cheating for links and traffic. Artificial link building.

White Hat is basically not building any backlinks but letting them come to you. Also not spaming your site for keywords. Articles and and PR releases I think would be considered White Hat, but anything beyond that...

Grey Hat is link exchanging with unrelated sites just for the link, buying text links, PPC, etc. IMO.

A White Hat can be successful but it takes longer. The less patient take to the gray hat tactics me thinks.

[Wit]

I'm not gonna get involved in this :) :)

[Dustin07]

oops. wrong post. need a delete button, lol

[jocelyn]

You do the clean, I never cross the line and take a long time to meet your goals (if you ever meet them). But even when an update stikes, you get out of it almost untouched or better.

You do the grey thing and get unrelated links to jumpstart the site. Can't be sure they help much or not, but you ain't getting slapped so you just keep doing your thing...

You are on a hurry... take all shortcuts, get paid links, spam the hell out of all you can think. You do great for a while and then G slices and dices you, and are left with the other SE traffic... if they did not slice you also. Obviously you have to get generated content... why spend time writing content that will be good only for a while. So you make just crap and get short results that eventually fade...

I start grey and turn white... you have to get the site to be crawled and seen somehow to get natural links to it... SE's know you have to get a few links to be indexed... it's just normal... once it gets good links, you kill the jumpstart links. To be white and patient is a thing, but you got to get things rolling a bit... lol

[Dustin07]

I am learning basically everything you just said.

Tortoise and the Hare = White Hat V.S. Black Hat.

And the Gray Hat? Borderline waste of time.

I think you are right that a lot of the links Gray Hatters (myself included) gain are nearly worthless. Both for PR and traffic.

I have plans to make another website soon. It will be my 5th. My 3rd non-profit. I plan to just try to build a great content site and advertise through viral (hopefully) marketing. While I dont' plan to limit outgoing links, I don't hope to build a lot of links by exchanging. I hope to just build a good site that people actually want to link to on their own. That is true White Hat.

[etech-racheal]

The primary difference between white and black hat hackers is that a white hat hacker claims to observe the hacker ethic.

White hat is used to describe those who attempt to break into systems or networks in order to help the owners of the system by making them aware of security flaws.

Black hat is the act of compromising the security of a system without permission from an authorized party, usually with the intent of accessing computers connected to the network.

[covient]

Hi ALL,

As per me..Black HAT SEO is the one we do on website by hiding so many thing from viewers and only visible to search engines...Making text as of same color to background...is blaCK HAT..

Whereas in WHite Hat we do everything on site which is visible to viewers as well as SE's

_______________________________

Visit our Software Outsourcing company (http://www.covient.com)

[Dustin07]

Making text as of same color to background...is blaCK HAT.

It's my understanding that this will get you banned from SE's like Google.

White hat is used to describe those who attempt to break into systems or networks in order to help the owners of the system by making them aware of security flaws.

I think you are confusing web designers and marketers with hackers. While some hacking can be done in web design, we are talking SEO's, which is different from a hacker, IMO.

[wrockca]

Great Comments from Everyone...


Grey Hat is link exchanging with unrelated sites just for the link, buying text links, PPC, etc. IMO.

Grey Hat is a new term, I do agree to the unrelated sites however some buy text links for more related traffic just like one would buy a banner ad, and yes others use it to inflate traffic. I think we will see a huge difference with Google giving different value over content vs. links because of how that technique was abused. As for the PPC again just another way to gain traffic from a search engine and is a normal marketing technique, however to say its any hat I would say that it does nothing for your organic rankings and is very strict in the way a marketer can use the solution.



I think you are confusing web designers and marketers with hackers. While some hacking can be done in web design, we are talking SEO's, which is different from a hacker, IMO.

I would have to say that Black Hat SEO is a form of hacking and yes you see a ton of them in the pharmacy, casinos and porn.

[Dustin07]

I would have to say that Black Hat SEO is a form of hacking and yes you see a ton of them in the pharmacy, casinos and porn.

yes, but I wouldn't call a white hat seo a hacker.

As for the PPC again just another way to gain traffic from a search engine and is a normal marketing technique, however to say its any hat I would say that it does nothing for your organic rankings and is very strict in the way a marketer can use the solution.

good point :)

[wrockca]

Thanks, per your comment:

I wouldn't call a white hat seo a hacker.

I am a full on White Hat SEO and no I do not spam but Black means just what it sounds like in my eyes a Dark Magic that does work for a while, but does get found and givin the boot, and is a true form of spamming a SE.

[Dustin07]

I can't call myself a white hat. I'd like to though, and I'm sure I may be in the future. The majority of the questionable tactics I've used aren't out of deviousness, as much as ignorance. I've spammed without even realizing I was spamming! I'm getting better at finding the line though. There definately are those who know what they are doing when they do it wrong.