Hiring an in-house SEO professional or outsourcing to a professional SEO agency is standard practice for businesses today. Entrepreneurs are realizing that good organic search engine visibility is far more lucrative than conventional advertising. But before investing in SEO, understanding the difference between white hat SEO and black hat SEO is very important. These concepts are based on the legitimacy of SEO techniques as mandated by search engine guidelines. Off late, an intermediary practice of grey hat SEO has also emerged. To avoid search engine penalties, fall in ranking, and reduced organic traffic, businesses should know all the necessary postulates of ethical SEO as defined by search engines.
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White Hat SEO and Black Hat SEO: Results, Sustainability, User Experience, and More
Start-ups and SMEs with no prior digital marketing experience should be careful not only with outsourcing SEO but even while purchasing standalone packages like guest posting services or link-building services. Unscrupulous black hat techniques will show an immediate extraordinary boost in search rankings and organic traffic, but this is short-lived. Search engines will detect fraudulent activity and penalize or block the site in a few days. To ensure that your SEO investment is worthwhile, here are 7 things you need to know about white hat SEO and black hat SEO:-
Search Engine Compliance and Risk Quotient
The terms, conditions, and recommended best practices of all prominent search engines are adhered to by white hat SEO techniques. A gradual and consistent campaign, when implemented tactfully, can bring about fantastic results. Black hat SEO involves the misuse of SEO techniques to dupe search engines, fool users, and gain sudden high rankings/traffic for a short span. It is extremely risky, unethical, and unnecessary.
Improvement in Search Rankings and Higher Organic Traffic
Once your search rankings start ascending with professionally-helmed white hat SEO, it goes only uphill from there. With highly targeted traffic being directed to the site, the lead generation and conversion process gets a massive boost.
Impact on User Experience
Top-notch UX and high-quality content form the backbone of white hat SEO. Search users who organically land up on the site will find the content useful and the conversion probability will be higher. Black hat SEO techniques always mislead users to a low-grade site with clickbait titles. The content is just meant to dupe search engines and doesn’t benefit potential customers in any way.
Keywords and Content Quality
White hat SEO specifies the moderate use of well-researched keywords in the natural flow of the content. The keywords should never appear forced, unrelated, or excessive. In contrast, black hat SEO tactics involve keyword stuffing to manipulate search rankings for particular keywords. In most instances, the keywords and content do not comply with the search intent.
Traits of Backlinks and Landing Pages
White hat SEO involves soliciting relevant backlinks from high-authority sites in the same niche or industry. The landing pages are customized and CTA-oriented to best assist visitors. Black hat SEO relies on massive, spammy link-building from irrelevant sites and dubiously creates doorway pages for the sole purpose of ranking higher dishonestly.
Ethical Use of Metadata, Schema, and Images
User-focused, enriched, and well-optimized on-site elements are the hallmark of white hat SEO. Black hat marketers rely on copied images, duplicate content, irrelevant schema, and so on.
Results and Sustainability
Even if a phenomenal rise in web traffic is observed using black hat methods, the same will never bolster leads or revenue generation. It is just a decoy by fraudulent SEO service providers to impress novice business owners. Only white hat SEO can bring in tangible results and consistent ROI in the long run.
Conclusion
Be it the Google Search Essentials, Bing Webmaster Guidelines, or the Yahoo Community Guidelines, white hat SEO techniques always ensure full compliance. It might take months to start seeing results, but the success is long-term. Considering the outright (and almost immediate) negative consequences of black hat techniques, some website owners might be tempted to pursue grey hat SEO. This combines both ethical and unethical practices, thus making it difficult for search engines to identify the hidden malpractice immediately. But grey hat SEO will dilute user experience and adversely affect the website quality. This will drastically increase the bounce rate, reduce organic traffic, and lower search rankings. So be it a black hat or a grey hat, any unethical technique that defeats the very purpose of SEO should be staunchly avoided.
