Internet business has grown tremendously over the last decade and is definitely here to stay. Website marketing has at the same time become a highly skilled and competitive occupation. As a good ranking on the SEO’s will almost certainly put your business in a very lucrative situation, all stops are pulled out to get the website into the top 10.

Due to the increasing demand for website marketing, SEO’s have continuously upgraded as well. Technological development to enhance the enormous business potential is taking place on a continuous basis. Over the years marketers have used many types of strategies or techniques to obtain high SEO rankings.

As some of these techniques were also considered as unethical by SEO’s they developed new software technology to combat it. Those website marketers that ‘stick to the rules’ so to speak eventually became known as ‘white hat‘ marketers. The ones using unethical techniques are referred to as ‘black hat’ marketers. Recently a new shade of ‘grey hats’ made its appearance on the marketing scene.

White hat techniques

‘White hat’ marketers tend to follow the guidelines of the SEO religiously. This is a wise decision as search engines have become exceedingly adept at spotting any unwelcome activities on websites. They do not hesitate to penalize the site and in under certain circumstances may eliminate it completely.

This usually means that a lot of hard work and money goes down the drain. White hat strategy that is skillfully utilized usually protects the company‘s website information and will have a long standing good relationship with the search engines. Even though marketing results take time to eventually show a profit, there is no danger of the site being dismantled because of underhand techniques.

The integrity of the website also remains intact if it remains SEO friendly. One of the popular ‘white hat‘ techniques is the clever use of internal linking. This simply allows the search engine to access all aspects of information on website and not cut out somewhere along the line.

Black hat techniques

Black hat techniques on the other hand are usually short lived. SEO’s have come up with tools that detect them even faster than before. There are those that get away with it and this can mean making large profits on a short term.

Black hats have ways and means to achieve high rankings by fooling the SEO’s. Excessive use of keywords used to be one of the main strategies to attain high rankings. This technique can be considered useless, as it is no longer regarded as a major factor for SEO rankings. Another cheap trick is the use of invisible text. This has fallen out of use as crawlers easily detect what the naked eye cannot see.

Grey areas

As there are no direct rules regarding internet marketing, search engines on occasions condone certain areas of ‘unethical’ practices. As we all know the various shades of grey can be many, it is better to stick to acceptable ‘white hat’ for lasting results.

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