SEO is fundamental for any company looking to position its website, although it is necessary to know which techniques can be used and which are better to avoid. Today we teach you all about White Hat and Black Hat. You can't miss it! Attention!
what is White Hat?
White Hat uses ethically correct techniques, as they comply with the guidelines and standards set by search engines for web positioning. White Hat techniques are based on creating quality content, achieving popularity through content optimisation and a pleasant user experience.
Although White Hat seeks to position organically and obtain results in the medium and long term, the positioning will also depend on the niche and competition. In this sense, some of the techniques offered by White Hat include:
- Page optimisation: Improving the page and subpages through keywords is the best option. Try to make them make sense in relation to the topic you are dealing with and without abusing them.
- Quality content: Good content will attract more people, as Google usually compensates those who do their job well.
- Social networks are a good source of traffic and most of them allow you to spread the word about your content.
what is Black Hat?
In Black Hat, unethical actions are carried out with the aim of quickly increasing positions in search engines. Most of the techniques used in Black Hat are penalised by search engines, which could ruin the reputation of the brand. Some of the techniques used in Black Hat are:
- Keywords Stuffing, which is based on excessive repetition of keywords to position the article.
- Cloaking: It seeks to show different content, i.e. it uses misleading titles that do not reflect the meaning of the article.
- Spinning: This is based on copying articles and then publishing them on other sites to improve positioning, i.e. gaining fame at the expense of others.
- Spam: Comments and links in places that were not conducive to their repeated dissemination.
- This is the theft of data (passwords, credit card numbers, names, etc.) to damage the competition.
- Page hijacking: Page hijacking involves creating a website that duplicates the content of another website that already exists and making sure that the duplicate page gets a better reputation than the original.
- Link Farming: When we talk about a link farm we mean having several websites that offer thousands of paid links pointing to our blog. Normally, these sites are usually on very different topics and not related to the page they point to.
Consequences of applying Black Hat SEO
While SEO is all about increasing a website's organic visibility and traffic, black hat tactics can actually result in the opposite. To help you understand why to avoid these approaches, don't miss these three disadvantages:
- Can have a negative impact on your search ranking and visibility: When a website loses traffic and visibility, it usually means that conversions and revenue follow suit. This can mean a reduction in a company's revenue.
- It will not generate long-term results: Even in cases where SERP rankings and organic performance initially increase from manipulative techniques, they are rarely sustained. While it can take time for Google to detect that a site is engaging in unethical practices, once it happens, the loss of traffic is inevitable.
- It often provides a very poor user experience: SEO should take into account a user's experience on a site and work to provide the best content and user experience. However, Black Hat SEO techniques do exactly the opposite: they optimise for search engines rather than users. This, in itself, can be problematic.
what are the main differences between White Hat and Black Hat?
The big difference between White Hat and Black Hat is that the former pays attention to every aspect of the website and the user experience, while the latter does not follow the rules, and seeks to achieve page rankings by any means possible.
With Black Hat, unethical actions are always present, causing penalties that could damage the brand permanently. White Hat always follows the rules, which is why it will always have a special place in the search engines.
Finally, remember that even if black hat offers short-term results, it will never be the right choice. White hat, although it will give long-term results, is the best thing you can do for your brand. Doing things right will get you good results and, even if it takes a little longer, it will be worth the investment.
