Search Engine Optimization or the SEO exercise which it is generally called has been around for a while now where different strategies are applied on a website to help it achieve a higher ranking amidst search engines. As the name suggests white is synonymous with purity and it’s the same thing that signifies here. White hat SEO strategies mean strategies which are clean and devoid of any malicious tactics. In simple terms, White hat SEO means backed by principles and follows all the rules to correctness.

Providing great white hat SEO strategies to get you high SEO ranking is always a challenge for companies but following the same is the most beneficial. It improves your Page rank and enhances your traffic in a natural manner. We must remember Search engines like white hat techniques too and give you weightage for incorporating the technique by giving you great rankings.

SEO has been there for a while but things have been evolving and the present SEO is an overhauled version of the previous one. Thankfully the criterion remains the same but of course, the judging parameters have become more stringent now but no doubt following them is the key to a comfortable and high positioning on search engines.

The comfortable and a sign of relief is that what was important earlier is important now too and it all boils down to content.  Content has always mattered but now it is all the more important to have meaningful content. What has changed or become different is the scrutiny or the judging i.e. the basis on which content is considered good, bad or just mediocre types.

What is White hat SEO?

White hat SEO techniques are taken as the most principled practices and search engines keep content at the highest levels for judging or giving the rating. If the content on a website is genuine and written well then we can say that the content passes the white Hat SEO criteria and abides by it. Also, another aspect we must remember is that as the day goes by, the white hat SEO criteria grows more stringent and nowhere its value diminishes, so the aspect of ignoring them is like a suicide for a website. With the way, up-gradations keep on happening it is imperative that we follow the white hat SEO parameters and see the rise in website traffic. White hat SEO parameters make a website robust and immune to all the changes happening on the judging parameters of search engines. Be it a Panda or a penguin upgrades, you are strong.

Be on guard

Now that we have discussed a bit about the white hat techniques, let’s talk about the things which need to be avoided so that one does not fall prey to a criterion which might penalize you. It’s actually a very thin line and one requires a bit of a research that goes into judging if it’s a wrong strategy that we are falling into. But as the saying goes, prevention is better than cure, we want everyone to be on guard and avoid a situation where you can fall into it.

First steps towards White Hat SEO implementation

SEO benefits are just great. On top of that if you are implementing it with white hat SEO practices then it will surely be icing on the cake. To kick start the white hat SEO campaign there are a few aspects which need to be discussed beforehand and you need to be aware that these need to be implemented on your website so that your SEO efforts can produce the desired positive results. Here are the factors that you need to implement if you want to make your white hat SEO efforts yield results.

• In-depth content needs to be put up on the website which should be relevant and carry out value addition as well to your website
• The visual content should be very engrossing, entertaining as well as enhancing the Knowledgebase of the visitor.
• Meta tags need to be placed on the pages.
• The design and architecture of the website should not have any roadblocks and should augment quick scanning by search bots.
• Programming of the website should be such that its pages should open with ease and the entire operations are completed well and quickly.

Overall we will be righteous in saying that White Hat SEO Benefits are really huge and take a website a long way and is the simplest and cleanest way towards enhancing your website’s performance in getting you business. Reason being that your content is genuine and provides the user visiting your website an overall great experience.

What is Black hat SEO?

What is black hat SEO? As the name says it all black hat means something which is not right –dark and shady. Something, that is manipulative and clever in the wrong way.  Doing things in the wrong way and trying to do things in the over smart way where you try and go past the search engine rules.

Well, it could be doing a simple thing like getting links from anywhere and everywhere with just one thing in mind which is to get the numbers.  Not paying any attention to the quality of the links coming i.e. their page rank and not paying any attention to the page rank of the home page of the website and the content and the industry of the website. Ignoring all these crucial aspects can actually put you in a soup and needs to be genuinely avoided.

To give you an example we all know content plays a vital role in judging a website as per search engines. Website admins with an aim to add links to websites and also keeping the content criteria started linking their websites to article based directories. This was acknowledged at first and checked by search engines. However, upon a proper algorithm scanning, the anomaly was found and websites penalized where within just 4 days, websites which were ranking to a page rank of 6 were down to 1 and in many cases 0 too.

Well, this kind of punishment you can foresee that the search engines can give to you for ignoring the white hat SEO techniques.  These black hat techniques can take you only for a short distance but if you are looking at things from a long-term perspective then SEO services following White hat techniques are the way one needs to go.

White hat vs Black Hat- come judge for yourself if you are on the right track or not

SEO benefits are great and coupled with White hat SEO tactics the results will be huge. However in a desperate move to see immediate results, people force themselves to use some practices which make you see the results. But the way the results come fast the same way they do larger damage. Hold your horses be realistic with your expectations, be simple and grounded with your techniques and see the results come.

Few practices which you must avoid so that you do not fall trap to the black hat practices are mentioned. Just abstain from following these at all costs, these practices could be:

• Publishing content on your website which could be published or picked up from some other website.
• Creating automated content from a tool and also incorporating automated low-quality backlinks on the website.
• Accusing other websites of being involved in incorporating black hat techniques which they are not doing, in other words spreading false accusations.
• Falsely getting people to your website on the pretext of getting them to a particular website and in the end turning out to be something else completely.  This is totally uncalled for as you are falsely guiding people to your website.

Black hat techniques are totally unacceptable when it comes to presenting a website. Not just search engines even other websites will not prefer to be associated with you if somewhere you have been associated with a black head technique somewhere.

Search engines always want to give the best experience to their users and just to keep a check on this, have formulated simple steps for everyone to abide by.

It’s actually a bad situation where a website follows black hat practices and worse is when they have been successful in generating leads and doing business too through it. The search engines can ban you, though the chances are less they do so and you can see the dip in your sales and the organic traffic coming to you. Thus, it is always recommended to stop all the malicious black hat practices and follow white hat techniques to have a great working experience and see the right leads come to you the right way. 

Author Bio:

Tula works as a digital marketing specialist at Canbay. She has over 5 years of experience in digital marketing and social media marketing. She loves to spend her weekend with mandala art and coffee.