White Hat and Black Hat SEO. The Great Digital Clash You Had Better Know All About

A digital landscape is evolving, but one battle has kept the sands of time: the eternal struggle between good and evil, or more realistically, between white hat and black hat SEO. If you part ways in competition, running a website, or doing digital marketing, it certainly pays to learn the difference between white hat and black hat SEO.

Before the comparison, it's warranted to examine the basics.

What Is Black Hat SEO?

Consider yourself playing board games. Every player has agreed to a certain set of rules, and then one player starts breaking the rules in pursuit of a quicker win. Black hat SEO tactics, therefore, can be best defined as any actions taken to manipulate search engine algorithms in their favor, often at the cost of long-term legitimacy and user trust.

Black hat SEO techniques try to fool search engines instead of giving actual value to the user. They might work for the short term, but very soon they bring penalties or outright removal from search indexes. Some of the known black hat SEO methods are:

• Keyword stuffing (Rewinding the keywords unnaturally)
• Invincible text (hide keywords in the background)
• Link farming (build unnatural link networks)
• Cloaking (Presenting different content to the search engines as opposed to the users- black hat SEO cloaking)

With black hat SEO techniques 2020 fading into oblivion, the implementation of some strategies no longer exists within the boundaries of Google’s guidelines.

These tricks may help you temporarily, but once Google catches on — and trust me, they will — it’s game over.

What is White Hat SEO and Black Hat SEO?

So, if we have seen what constitutes dark-side SEO, let us now look at the opposition: white-hat SEO.

White hat SEO consists of those ethical and sustainable strategies that align with and respect search engine rules. The goal is to provide users with relevant and high-quality content along with a great experience. 

The answer to the question of what is white hat SEO and black hat SEO lies in intention and execution: black hat SEO is manipulating; white hat SEO is maximizing genuine value.

Some white hat SEO techniques are:

• Quality content creation
• Proper keyword research
• On-page optimization
• Getting backlinks through guest blogging and collaborations
• Fast-loading and mobile-friendly websites

Differences between White Hat SEO and Black Hat SEO

Let's just put it this way — white hat SEO is like having a top-notch gourmet chef putting together a meal, while black hat SEO is like having a fast-food worker pop something into the microwave. One requires time and love and is satisfying in the long run, while the other is... quite fast, but without content- and sometimes without quality.

Here are some differences:

Feature	White Hat SEO	Black Hat SEO
Approach	Ethical, sustainable	Aggressive, manipulative
Tactics	Follows search engine guidelines	Violates search engine policies
Risk Level	Low	Very high
Results	Long-term growth	Quick, short-term boosts (often followed by penalties)
Technique	Blog content, keyword optimization, quality backlinks	Cloaking, link farming, keyword stuffing

 

White Hat SEO vs Black Hat SEO: The Strategic Choice

So, when it comes to white hat SEO vs black hat SEO, which should you choose?

That depends on your vision. If you're interested in building a brand around longevity, credibility, and trust, then white hat is the way to go. If you want quick wins, maybe in a highly competitive niche full of throwaway domains, some might just step into black hat territory - but it is not at all recommended.

Search engines like Google constantly update their algorithm to put down black-hat strategies. A tough algorithm change can wipe out months or some years (if you are lucky) of unscrupulous work.

Black Hat SEO Services: Will You Use Them?

These days, there are plenty of companies offering black hat SEO services to eat up a client-base from instant ranking, guaranteed traffic, and quick results. Tempting? Maybe. Trustable? Rarely.

Some markets get these black hat tactics under the label of something vague-sounding like "advanced SEO" or "underground hacks." Some sell black hat SEO training courses to "outsmart" Google. Not to mention most of those tactics are borderline or outright illegal. 

Remember whenever you hear something that sounds too good to be true in the SEO world, it most probably is.

Examining Cloaking and Tools

 Cloaking is one of the more contentious practices of black hat SEO -- it is when you show the search engines different content than what end-user sees. For example; you present a keyword packed article to Google but present users with an entirely different landing page. This is deceptively misleading and can have serious long-term repercussions.

There have been a number of tools developed over the years that will assist with black hat activities -- and yes, there are even "black hat SEO tools" lists floating around the internet! You can find link spinners, auto-backlink generators, etc. They never work as intended, and will typically only hurt a website's reputation.

If you're looking for white hat SEO tools, there are plenty of great ones to choose from. Try SEMrush, Ahrefs, or Moz. They include features to help you optimize content, ethically analyze backlinks as well as keyword intelligence; all while staying compliant.

A Real-Life Black Hat SEO Example

Let's take a look at a black hat SEO example:

A company selling fake watches created hundreds of microsites with pages stuffed with keywords and hidden links. For a couple of weeks, it worked. At first, they were ranking high in search results. Until they received a penalty. Google not only removed every one of their sites from the index, but the parent domain was also blacklisted. Their traffic? Poof, gone. Their revenue? Destroyed.

Education with the Dark Side

Although these strategies can be risky, knowing black hat SEO strategies can be beneficial. Why? Because it allows you to figure out what to avoid — and some of the criminally shady competitors that could be doing the same.

In addition, knowing these methods with a black hat SEO course (again, schooling not implementing) will insulate your own SEO practices and stop you from potentially engaging the wrong people