In order to illustrate the difference between white hat and black hat SEO techniques or methods it is best to summarize how each is aimed at either search engines or humans. White hat techniques will make sense even if search engines weren’t involved while black hat techniques are useless without them.

Black hat content & links are aimed at search engines.
White hat content & links are aimed at humans

Black hat techniques are invisible to humans.
White hat techniques are visible to humans

The quality of black hat work is hidden.
The quality of while hat work is visible

Black hat sees search engines as their enemy.
White hat sees search engines as their ally

Black hat sees domains or branding as inconsequential.
White hat sees them as something to be nurtured

Black hat realizes short term results. Black hat employs unethical techniques.

White hat realizes long term results. White hat employs only ethical techniques

Content and Links

Black hat techniques develop content of a page and the links to a page for the purpose of search engines only. It is not meant to be seen by humans and there is a multitude of ways to accomplish this. If they are seen by humans they are so hard to navigate or read that they become useless. The aim of white hat content and links on the other hand are aimed at nothing else by the human reader.

Quality of work

When work is not meant to be seen it often doesn’t matter what the quality of it is. Black hat techniques that hide work don’t care what they are doing on the name of their client. Their work isn’t open to review either which makes it impossible for anyone to critique, give criticism or praise.

White hat work is visible and for this reason is presented in a way that satisfies the scrutiny of client, peers and professionals.

Many black hat techniques treat search engines as their enemy and they concentrate on working against them. White hat techniques will treat a search engine as their friend even if the aim of their website is for the benefit of human visitors and not search engines. For this reason white hat SEO can be used quite successfully for alternative audiences. The bonus is producing WebPages that rank well in search engines.

Black hat can only be successful in the presence of search engines.

Branding and Domains

There is always a risk of having a domain removed from a search engine index. At times it can be done accidentally or deliberately. Even white hat techniques are vulnerable. Yet there are techniques that can be employed to mitigate the risk of this happening.

However black hat techniques open themselves to a higher level of risk and there is very little they can do to mitigate their risk. They know this and as a result tend to treat domains as inconsequential or disposable. This is just one more example of how black hat techniques could not care who bears the results of their actions.

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