What Is The Difference Between Black Hat & White Hat SEO Techniques?

For business/website owners who aren’t tech-savvy, it’s unfortunate that SEO is such an important part of the value of your website. The reason it’s unfortunate is because it means you have to learn enough about what SEO is to understand the difference between black and white hat SEO techniques.
If you don’t, you could hire the wrong provider… somebody who talks the talk and sounds like a professional— only to find out that your website is now blacklisted (will not show in search engine results) because your “professional” took a few shortcuts.

What is Black Hat? SEO Techniques to Avoid…

In a word: unethical.
It’s not that black hat SEO techniques aren’t effective. The goal is to get on the front page of Google search results as quickly as possible. Sounds good, right?
Unfortunately, that should never be your goal. Aggressive SEO does not result in a sustainable web presence. It costs a lot of money to have a quality website developed, so if you don’t want that investment to be wasted in vain please be patient and avoid shortcuts like:

• Building as many backlinks as possible, because it should increase your Page Rank (Google PR)
• Using target keywords as much as possible throughout your web pages, meta data, and blog content.
• Publishing a lot of content.

The common element with all black hat techniques—because they are aggressive strategies—is to focus on quantity.
It might feel like you are getting more for less. That’s why some confused providers will try to offer white hat SEO, yet still recommend the $5 article writers. On the contrary, you’re wasting more money and getting less because you are skipping over the most important thing: quality.

What is White Hat? SEO Techniques to Utilize…

Be patient.
White hat SEO may also use the same techniques (building links, incorporating keywords throughout your website, publishing content) but the focus is to put quality before quantity. It takes longer for search engines to appreciate the new quality websites. However, when you can prove that you are a quality website you will be kept in search results much longer than a flash in the pan junk site that has been overly optimized and holds no value to real people.

• Figure that Page Rank doesn’t matter, and neither does the number of backlinks pointing to your website. Instead, use link building as a marketing strategy to gain exposure to a targeted audience. Do this by exchanging links with relevant websites or guest blogging. Something of real value that will get views and clicks!
• Sure, include your keywords where appropriate. Naturally. That’s a no brainer… it’s not like you would avoid those phrases! In some cases, you might want to go a little out of your way to make sure a keyword is placed strategically. Just don’t base the entire page around a specific word, or it’s useless!
• Publish often, but not too often! If you’d like to get subscribers, publish valuable articles. If you’d like to keep subscribers… don’t overwhelm them. Too much of a good thing can still be marked as spam.

It might feel like white hat SEO techniques are more expensive. Apples are also more red than an orange. Your point?
Black hat SEO doesn’t take branding or marketing into consideration. Those techniques use a set of “skills” that aren’t worth much of an investment at all. They aren’t meant to. Black hat strategies are for disposable websites.

White hat SEO comes from a provider who carries more skills and capabilities. Of course you can’t judge a provider based on their rates… only by the techniques used.