Black Hat vs White Hat Basics

White Hat vs. Black Hat SEO

There is much debate online about what is black hat or white hat SEO. What some will recommend as white hat will be chastised has black hat by other SEO gurus.

If the idea of white or black hat is new to you, think back to the old cowboy movies. A white hat is worn by the hero or the good guy. White hat SEO refers to practices in SEO that are ethical and will produce results over a long period of time. White hat SEO also follows the guidelines discussed at Google Webmaster Central.

Black hat can be thought of as the villain or bad guy. In terms of SEO, black hat refers to unethical methods of SEO that may or may not have a short term result, but can get your site banned or punished by the search engines in the long run. Some black hat SEO practices include keyword stuffing, hidden text, link farming, blog comment spam, and many others.

There can often be a fine line between what is considered white or black hat SEO and that has caused there to be a new term of grey hat SEO. Grey hat SEO can be used to describe individual SEO practices that may not have a clear black or white definition.

If you are unsure of whether or not the SEO practices that you have been taken part in you can refer to these basic guidelines from Google Webmaster Central.  For those of you who are newer to SEO and would like to learn more you can also check out Google’s Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide (PDF) to learn the basics.