White Hat Vs Black Hat Seo

If there’s an ethical way to do something, that means there are unethical ways lurking around out there, too.

White-Hat

Basically, “white-hat” tactics are genuine efforts to improve user experience. Google’s goal is to provide the best user experience possible, so they reward white-hat strategies by bumping your website up in search results. This takes thought and time; it’s the straight and narrow way to improving a website’s search ranking.

Black-Hat

The shady shortcuts used to manipulate search engines are called “black-hat” techniques. If you’re just stepping into the world of SEO, you may not realize that something you are doing (or something you’ve hired someone to do for you) is frowned upon by the search engines, but these actions can get your website penalized and even banned, so it’s important to be aware of black-hat practices in order to avoid them.

This infographic from inboundmarketinginc.com outlines some basic differences between black hat and white hat strategies:Black-vs-White-Hat-SEO

As with most things in life, if it seems a little too quick, too cheap or too easy to be true, it probably is…and there are bound to be consequences if you take the shady route.

Be sure to ask questions about the methods being used before hiring an SEO company. At Adroit Creative Solutions, we use only white-hat SEO strategies to improve website rankings. Contact us today; we’d love to answer your questions or ethically optimize your website.