Ever since search engine optimisation was first created, there has been a great debate as to whether one should use white hat SEO or resort to black hat tactics. The more the internet marketing industry expanded the more intense the debate became.

While both forms have their advantages and disadvantages, they are very different ways of implementing a search engine optimisation. One can either choose to go white hat SEO or black hat, but one can never implement them both. Once black hat tactics are applied the purity of white hat SEO is lost. So what exactly is white hat SEO?

Clean cut white hat SEO

When you choose to incorporate white hat SEO it means that you follow the correct and ethical procedure of search engine optimisation. You follow SEO by the book from the creation of your site to the introduction of it to the online world.

Your main focus when using white hat SEO is the impression you create on your visitors. You want them to find your website naturally and not be lured onto your site through a deceitful manner. Incorporating white hat SEO ultimately means that you obtain a good reputation amongst internet users.
In order to benefit from a white hat approach, it is important that your content is unique and fresh. It also has to be relevant to the theme of your site. Your link building should be legit and no other unethical means to artificially increase your ranking on search engine results pages should be used.

Wearing the black hat is dangerous

At some point, almost all website owners have thought about making using black hat tricks. This is because they realise how difficult it is to compete against other websites in their niche. White hat SEO often takes a lot of patience but eventually it can secure a strong search engine optimisation campaign.
Black hat SEO is the opposite of white hat search engine optimisation. It is the implementation of unethical and deceitful means of improving ranking and driving traffic to a website.

Black hat search engine optimisation techniques may ensure instant success because it uses things like keyword stuffing, hidden text, cloaked pages as well as link farms but it does not give you a very good online reputation. People who get lured onto a site through these black hat techniques do not trust making transactions on these websites nor do they return.

Why breaking the rules does not pay

When you look to black hat SEO to get your website more visibility it is not only your reputation that gets scorned but your site may be banned or penalised.
Google, Microsoft, Yahoo and many other search engines are always aware of website owners making use of unethical search engine optimisation. These techniques make it difficult for others who do use white hat SEO to compete and therefore, search engines hope to eradicate the use of black hat tricks by penalising or restricted those who don’t obey the rules.

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