Whitehat SEO vs Blackhat SEO practices by Search Engine Optimizers

There are many techniques for search engine optimization, or SEO for short. The techniques of SEO basically fall into the category of on-page SEO and off-page SEO.

Of the techniques in each of those categories, some techniques are more ethical than others. The ethical techniques are known as "white hat" search engine optimization techniques. The unethical techniques are known as "black hat". The use of the term "black hat" refers to the fact that in old movies, the villain it is portrayed usually wearing a black hat. And the good guy is portrayed usually wearing a white hat.

There are some techniques that fall in that gray area where it is debatable as to whether it is ethical or unethical depending on whom you ask. Hence they are called "grey hat" techniques.

White Hat SEO vs. Black Hat SEO

How do we determine if a technique is white hat or black hat?

Black Hat SEO

In general, if you are trying to trick or deceive the search engines using a method that is typically not used by traditional coder or designers, then it is usually a black hat technique.

For example, one black hat search engine optimization technique is known as "keyword stuffing" where you put excessive amounts of keywords into your content such that the writing is no longer natural. An natural writer would not write in such a way.

Another black hat technique is to place "Invisible text" - that is text that has the same color as the background color such that it is not visible to the visitor, but is visible to the search engines. This is not something a designer or a coder would naturally do. Hence it is a black hat technique, because you are intentionally feeding the search engine with the optimized text that you are not showing to your natural visitors.

There are many other black hat techniques, but we will not go into their details here. These are just here to give you an example of what they typical are.

White Hat SEO

Examples of white hat search engine optimization techniques would be to reduce code bloat by using external CSS and JavaScript files and by using table less layout design. There is nothing wrong with this. This is standard coding best practice. It simply has the additional benefit of increasing search engine ranking as well (with all other things being equal).

Adding alt tag to images is another good white hat search engine optimization technique. The "alt" tag is used by screen readers to assist the visually impaired by describing in words what the image is. The use of alt tags has a benefit to the users. This is therefore a good white hat technique. By associating extra text to an image, search engines can see that extra text. Hence, search engine queries for that text will be ranked a little bit higher for that page with the extra text.

These are just two obvious examples. Of course, there are many more white hat SEO techniques that your SEO consultant would be familiar with.

Main Point

Use only white hat search engine optimization techniques. Don't use black hat techniques. Search engines have become more sophisticated. They can see through your black hat techniques and will penalize you by ranking your page even lower than what you would normally rank. As such, black hat optimization techniques do not work. And hence it would probably be incorrect to even label them as "optimization techniques". Perhaps we should label them as "de-optimization techniques".