What is White Hat SEO versus Black Hat SEO?

Have you heard the term white hat SEO or black hat SEO recently and wondered what they mean? These terms refer to two different types of search engine optimization (SEO) strategies and techniques. To know which technique of SEO to pursue for your website, you first must understand what each includes and the differences between the two.


Prefer video? Watch 'White Hat SEO versus Black Hat SEO' on Skyberry's YouTube channel.

With SEO, there are many routes you can take to increase your rankings in search engines.  No matter what route you take, the approach you or your web developer takes, fall into one of two categories, either white hat SEO or black hat SEO.  The category you choose, is based on the techniques and strategies you deploy to increase your search engine rankings.

Let's get started with defining these terms to gain a better understanding of each approach.

What is white hat SEO?

Refers to the usage of optimization techniques focused on a human audience and follows search engine rules. White hat SEO may also be referred to as 'Ethical SEO'.

An example of a website that uses white hat SEO is optimized for search engines and focuses on organic search engine results.  Techniques may include using keywords, link building and writing content for human readers.

What is black hat SEO?

Refers to the usage of aggressive and improper SEO techniques that focus solely on search engines instead of a human audience. Black hat SEO may also be referred to as 'Unethical SEO'.  Black hat SEO can often result in your website being banned from search results because the techniques deployed do not follow search engine rules and policies.

Typically, black hat SEO is used by someone who doesn't intend to use their website for long because the focus is on a quick and high return business model. This makes the risk of being banned by search engines irrelevant.

Common black hat SEO techniques include keyword stuffing, invisible text, adding unrelated keywords to the page content and page swapping (completely changing the website content after it has been ranked by search engines).

Let's take a look at a comparison chart of white hat SEO versus black hat SEO.

Overall, if your goal is to build a good, respectable website, fill it with quality content and then use white hat SEO techniques to increase its search engine rankings.

Want to know more? Watch the video

Visit Skyberry on YouTube to watch 'White Hat SEO versus Black Hat SEO', presented by Creative Director, Lacey Johnston.