Everyone has heard of the terms ‘white hat SEO’ and ‘black hat SEO’ to distinguish between the types of activities that web designers employ to win high ranking for their sites.

White hat refers to those that the search engines approve of, and have the benefits of getting the site long-term recognition without running any risks. Black hat however, refers to methods that use deception – of both search engines and human visitors – to get noticed and to get those top listings. They tend to get results quickly before being discovered and boycotted by the search engines; sometimes the ban is temporary, sometimes it is for life.

Search Engine Optimisation is a viable and effective means for websites to improve their listings – some would argue that it is the only real way to generate traffic. But are the devious, and instantly successful, black hat tactics really the only alternative to the ethical and safe, but more time consuming, white hat methods?

There are those in the field of Search Engine Optimization that suggest something different: Grey Hat SEO – the area in between.

First impressions suggest that grey hat involves methods that we would class as black hat. For example: cloaking, paid links and duplicate content. Grey hatters would argue that it isn’t so simple. They would say that cloaking isn’t always black hat; that cloaking is legitimate if your website had content that would make it logical for the search engine to see but not the user – like the content behind a ‘member’s only’ section.

They would go on to say that paid links are only black hat if they were being used for the sole reason to bump up link popularity, but fine if they are purchased as advertising. They would also add that there are cases where duplicate content is not only legitimate, but to be expected: resource sites and news sites for example.

Much of the arguments being used to defend the nature of grey hat depend on the context in which things are viewed and an ability to shift the goalposts. As one grey hat puts it: “What we’re trying to do is play around with the margins between the pros of black hat and white hat ’til we can find a happy medium that is both acceptable to other webmasters and the search engine antispam algorithms.”

But not everyone who has interests in the field of search engine optimisation sees grey hat has such a skilful pursuit. Some regard it as black hat without the courage, or simply as an inability to see the difference between black and white, or right and wrong.

Either way it’s clear. Grey hat still presents a risk. There are ways to increase your Search Engine Optimisation that come risk-free and yield results, that won’t see your site reported, disgraced or banned. You have to ask yourself whether the alternative is really worth it or not. The choice is yours; you have been warned.

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