white hat vs. black hat

[sam45]

when someone talks about white hat vs. black hat SEO strategy, what do they mean?

[suwunk]

An SEO technique is considered white hat if it conforms to the search engines' guidelines and involves no deception. As the search engine guideline
Black hat SEO attempts to improve rankings in ways that are disapproved of by the search engines, or involve deception. One black hat technique uses text that is hidden, either as text colored similar to the background, in an invisible div, or positioned off screen. Another method gives a different page depending on whether the page is being requested by a human visitor or a search engine, a technique known as cloaking.
Search engine optimization - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[apsarabanu]

Hi everyone,
Whitehats are those website designers that "play nice" and try to follow all of the search engine guidelines to optimize their site. Blackhats are where website designers use backdoors, cloaking, and other tricks to optimize sites.

[Nicole5]

However, in a less pure sense, these are how I'd class a few common tactics:

Whitehat
- guest blog posts
- blog comment on relevant blogs manually
- build some awesome content and tell people about it to hope they link to you
- directory submissions for directories relating solely to your niche

Greyhat
- build web 2.0s with unique content
- sponsored posts on others' blogs
- building templates for wordpress with footer links
- slightly crap directory submission
- link exchange with related websites


Blackhat
- private blog networks, building your own or buying links on one
- using software (Xrumer, scrapebox) to build links
- weird 301 redirect schemes
- mass link exchanges
- hacking others' sites for links / other dodgy stuff that people don't really do


Hope this helped you!

[samanthacastle]

thanks Nicole5 for the nice examples, very clear.

[nicholasstorm]

Hi,

Answered above but I'm new here so just wanted to add two cents. Look at it from a webuser perspective as well. If you search for something, the most relevant information should come back in position #1 though #10 in search engine. If everyone would adhere to TOS of the SE's, the logic is that this would happen. Given that many webmasters are still focused on very excessive on-page SEO, including using many (and more) of what Nicole5 lists, the user experience is impacted and you can well end up seeing junk in the first positions wwhile genuine stuff later only. This is what the SE's and Big G is after in particular and what has driven the animal drive - also knowns as the Penguin and Panda algo changes.

Cheers,