What is SEO?
SEO, the short form for Search Engine Optimization, is the process of increasing the quantity and quality of a website’s traffic. Search Engine Optimization’s main goal is to optimize the website to improve the website’s rank and traffic. SEO is one of the most important and crucial marketing strategies. Moreover, before learning about White Hat vs. Black Hat SEO, you should learn what quantity and quality traffic is.
What exactly is the quantity and quality traffic?
Quality Traffic :
Quality traffic is the traffic that are genuinely interested in the products or services that a website offers. Moreover, there are two types of visitors that visit your website. The first is the one that has a genuine interest in the products you offer, and the second are the one that comes to your site by accident. In addition to this, SEO helps a website improve the quality of the website’s traffic with proper optimization.
Quantity Traffic :
When your website will have the right people looking for the products or services you offer, having more people coming to your website is a good thing. Quantity Traffic is good for your website only if the quality of the traffic is good. SEO helps your website get more good quality and quantity of traffic.
Search Engine Optimization helps optimize the website to improve its ranking. You can optimize a website in many ways. Some of them are:
Original Content:
One thing that helps optimize the website is the content. You should keep updating the content of the website. Not just this, it is also important that the content that is used on the website is unique. You should not use duplicate content.
Improvement in quantity and quality of the links:
Your website will come more in a notice in a search engine’s eyes if your website has good quality page links. More good-quality page links to your website will help a lot in optimizing your website.
Speed of the Website:
Speed of the website plays a major role in improving the quantity of traffic of a website. If your website has less speed, in other words, if your website will take a longer period to load pages, then people will stop visiting your website.
Mobile-Friendly Website:
Most of people use their mobile to use the internet. So it is very important for your website to be mobile-friendly. Moreover, if your website is not properly optimized for mobile, your website will lose a large amount of organic mobile traffic.
Other Factors
Some other factors that help in improving the rank of your website are:
Image Optimization
Social Sharing
Page Structure, etc.,
There are two things that are most commonly used in the process of Search Engine Optimization. These are:
- On-page SEO and Off-page SEO
- White Hat SEO and Black Hat SEO
On-Page SEO and Off-Page SEO
The activities involved in Search Engine Optimization are categorized into two terms, On-Page SEO and Off-Page SEO. In addition to this, many activities are performed by a good SEO professional to optimize the website. These activities are grouped based on their characteristics for an easy understanding.
All the activities that are performed on the website are categorized together and are included in On-Page SEO. On-Page SEO includes all the activities that are done on the website to optimize it. The activities included in On-Page SEO are:
- Title Tags
- Meta Descriptions
- SEO friendly Content Writing
- Cannibalization of Keyword
- Optimization of Image, etc.
Off-Page SEO includes the activities that are not done directly on the website but still help the website increase the rank. Off-Page SEO includes working on getting high-quality backlinks so that search engines think that your website has authority and value. Other than this, Off-Page SEO includes working on social media and Local SEO.
Social Media helps us in connecting with potential customers or visitors. It helps in promoting and connecting more with the potential buyers. Local SEO is another part of Off-page SEO as Word-of-mouth plays a big role in connecting more people with the business.
White Hat SEO and Black Hat SEO
Before discussing White Hat SEO vs. Black Hat SEO, it is important that we discuss general guidelines that should be followed by SEO professionals. Google has made some quality guidelines that should be strictly followed by SEO professionals. Moreover, these guidelines mainly focus on deceptive and manipulative behavior. Cloaking and Scraping Content are some of the activities in this. Google is strictly against these kinds of activities of deceptive and manipulative nature.
All SEO professionals have to follow these guidelines. However, there are some people that do not follow these guidelines. Additionally, these people who follow and do not follow these search engine guidelines are grouped and are tagged as White Hat SEO and Black Hat SEO.
Origin
White Hats and Black Hats are very old terms. People used to use these hats in old cowboy movies. Usually, the hat’s color helps people know who the good guy is and who is the bad guy. The person wearing the white hat is the hero, while the person is wearing the black hat used to be the villain.
These terms are now in use in many different places. SEO uses these terms to categorize different SEO techniques. White Hat SEO means following the ethical tactics and search engine guidelines. Whereas, Black Hat SEO means using tactics that are against the search engine guidelines.
What is White Hat SEO?
White Hat SEO means optimizing the website using ethical practices. All the work is done under the search engine guidelines provided by Google and does not include any deceptive behavior.
Features:
#1 Search Engine Guidelines
One thing that differentiates White Hat SEO is that it follows all the search engine guidelines provided by Google. Google has made some rules and regulations in order to eliminate any fraud. Moreover, these search engine guidelines help in properly optimizing the website. The main focus of these guidelines is to reduce manipulation.
So if you are following the guidelines and are not trying to manipulate or deceive Google, you are using White Hat SEO.
#2 Human Audience
White Hat SEO works in improving the experience of the user while using the website. The topmost priority of Google is to provide the best results to the users. White Hat SEO includes tactics that help in making the website more useful for the user.
Optimizing the Image and posting unique and good content are some of the tactics used in White Hat SEO to improve site visitor’s experience.
#3 Time Consuming
White Hat SEO uses tactics and follows the guidelines at the same time, which makes the work more time consuming. It generally takes more time to optimize the website to improve its rank with White Hat SEO. But the plus point of using White Hat SEO is that the impact of using ethical tactics stays for a longer period of time.
The result that you get after using White Hat SEO is worth the work for it. Following the guidelines and the tactics leaves a great and long impact.
What is Black Hat SEO?
Black Hat SEO deals with optimizing the website without following the general search engine guidelines. The Black Hat SEO uses deceptive techniques to improve the rank of a website.
Features:
#1 Violates Guidelines
One of the big things that make Black Hat SEO different from White Hat SEO is that it does not follow the quality search engine guidelines provided by Google. The tactics used by Black Hat SEO violate the search engine guidelines provided by Google.
#2 Manipulative and Deceptive Nature
The nature of the tactics and practices involved in Black Hat SEO are of manipulative and deceptive nature. Black Hat SEO’s main focus is to deceive Google’s algorithm into improving the website’s rank.
The tactics used in the Black Hat SEO are designed in such a way to deceive Google into thinking that the website is more beneficial to the user than it actually is.
#3 Short Term Approach
Black Hat SEO does not work according to the guidelines of Google. The main aim of these tactics is to deceive Google. These tactics do not involve much work and require less time investment.
Google is always working to improve its algorithm and to prevent any manipulation. The tactics used leaves a short-term impact as when Google updates the algorithm, the rank of the website, which was improved using Black Hat SEO, also falls.
White Hat SEO Techniques
- High-Quality Content:
One of the most useful techniques for improving the rank of the website is that of writing high-quality content. High quality and unique content help the website a lot in optimizing the website. These blogs and articles help in the easy ranking of the website. Other than this, updating the content regularly also helps in the process of optimization.
Page Title and Metadata
Page Title and Metadata acts like a summary that you can read when you search for a particular keyword. They play a big role in the optimization of the website. It also helps improve the quantity and quality of traffic as a person will more like to visit a website with the proper page title and description.
Website Speed
One of the significant factors that repel most of the traffic that comes to the website is the website’s slow loading speed. People usually ignore going to the website with slow loading pages. White Hat SEO helps in reducing the loading time of the website pages.
Not just this, Google also ranks the website with fast loading time more than the website with slow loading time.
Black Hat SEO Technique
Keyword Stuffing:
It is a technique of Black Hat SEO in which content is stuffed with keywords in order to manipulate the search engine. This helps the website to deceive the search engine into thinking that the website has got some values and authorities.
This is one negative way of SEO that can also cause harm to the website. This may help the website to improve the rank, but not for too long.
Link Farming:
Link Farming is a technique of Black Hat SEO in which the website is filled with links of unimportant and unrelated websites that are hidden from the eyes of the visitors. Some people do this in order to achieve more traffic. However, it is not the right way of getting the quality and quantity of traffic.
Instead of improving the website’s quantity, it just puts your site at the risk of getting flagged. This tactic of SEO is totally against the search engine guidelines of Google.
Bad Content:
Just like publishing good content helps optimize the website and improve the quality and quantity of the traffic of the website. Poor quality of bad content will only repel your traffic. A person will not like to visit the site again that does not provide good information.
People used to copy a lot of content from other websites to improve the rank. But thanks to the new algorithm of Google, now it not only identifies the duplicate content but also decreases the rank of the website that is using the duplicate content.
Conclusion
After knowing that it is easy and quick to get the website ranked with Black Hat SEO, you may think it is one of the best choices. It is not true at all. Black Hat SEO does not always work and also comes with many risks. Not just this, the impact of Black Hat SEO only stays for a short period of time, whereas the website ranked using White Hat SEO stays ranked for a longer period of time. Now it is clear to you which kind of SEO strategy is easier between White Hat vs. Black Hat SEO
In White Hat vs. Black Hat SEO, Choosing White Hat SEO to optimize the website is the best option. IT does not involve any risk and also guarantees improvement in both the rank and quality, and quantity of traffic. IT also works according to the search engine guidelines provided by Google, making it more secure and safe.
Banner
English 
Chinese (Hong Kong) 
Chinese (China)