What is an SEO hat?

An SEO hat is a term used to describe the different aspects of a problem.  They are categorised according to colour which are symbolic of the approach, or modes which will be used to attack the problem.

There are six.  White Hats and Black Hats are the most commonly known and understood, but there also exists Gray Hats, Red Hats, Yellow Hats, Green Hats and Blue Hats.

White vs. Black

Or it could be said, ‘good; vs. ‘not good’.

Black hats are meant for search engine understanding while White hates are meant for humans.  Black hat techniques are hidden from humans while white hats are visible.  Black hats are the enemy towards SEO, while white hats are friends.

Black hat techniques are considered unethical practices which they use to optimize a site.  These practices can result in getting them banned from search engine though, or at least, penalized.

White hat techniques are ethical practices and follow the stipulations laid down by search engines.

Black Hat SEO Techniques

There is a wide and variety of black hat tricks.  Hidden text is one which hides or disguises text so that the reader cannot see it.  This can be done by using a font colour which is the same colour as the background of the web page, or it can be done by hiding text in an image.

Another technique is keyword stuffing which places a lot of irrelevant keywords in the Meta tags.  It is considered spam.

Cloaking is a much frowned on black hat practice which allows the reader to see one form of content while the search engine sees something different.  This is used mostly as a way to trick and deceive the search engine and the result is that highly optimized pages are given to the search engine while the human visitor gets a different web page from the same URL.  Porn sites use this to cover and promote their shady activities.

Another form of spamming is called page hijacking.  This is done mostly when we forget to renew a domain name.  The hijacker creates a rough copy of a popular website with similar content to the original site which it shows to the search engine spider, but then redirects the visitor to another malicious website.

Duplicate content uses the same content on different pages, if found out, the search engine will place penalties on the site which will result in lost rankings.  This is often not done intentionally, so it is good sense to put content on your pages that is different to the content on your sub domains.

While frames are not strictly black hat, they do make it difficult for the search engine spider to navigate your site and thus index it.

Email spamming consists of totally unwanted and unsolicited and is probably the best known method of spamming. This is unethical and wont win you any points in the long run.

Black hat techniques give only short term results and run the risk of penalties being imposed, ruining your reputation and causing loss of revenue and possible banning from search engines.

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