White Hat and Black Hat SEO

Search engine spiders can spot the difference between white hat and black hat SEO efforts. Optimize your site with white hat search engine optimization techniques to increase your search results and avoid the penalties of black hat SEO. 

Meta Tags

 

Black Hat SEO - Stuffing or Spamming Meta Tags

Stuffing or spamming your Meta tags does nothing for your search results except flag your site as one using black hat SEO. Search engines are always on the lookout for spammed Meta tags. For example, let's say an online pet store called Fiction Pets is stuffing its Meta tags. The site's black hat Meta keywords might read:

<meta name="keywords" content="fiction pets, pets, dogs and cats, pet stores, dogs, cats, lizards, birds, dog collars, hamster cages, jessica alba, fish, dog shampoo, dog treats, bird seed, good dogs, bad dogs, nice kitty"> 

Its stuffed Meta description might read: 

<meta name="description" content="Fiction Pets is the best pet store of all the pet stores. You've never seen a pet store like Fiction Pets. best pet stores, good pet stores, visit pet stores, contact pet stores"> 

White Hat SEO - Choose a Solid Keyword Phrase

Research your keyword phrase. Choose a solid keyword phrase that accurately represents your page and use it in your Meta tags. An example of Meta keywords: 

<meta name="keywords" content="online pet store, fiction pets, pet supplies, pets store, pet supply store">

A white hat Meta description could be: 

<meta name="description" content="Fiction Pets is an online pet store with a full line of pet supplies for dogs, cats, birds, fish and more. Our pet supply store can help you get everything you need for all of your pets."> 

• Content

 

Black Hat SEO - Hidden Content

There are many ways to hide content on your site. All of them are black hat SEO methods.

Hidden content includes white text full of keywords on a white background. Another black hat SEO method is using comment tags to hide keywords. For example: 

<!--hidden content, hidden content is bad, hidden content in comment tags is bad--!> 

White Hat SEO - Quality Content

Content that targets a strong, related keyword phrase on each page wins every time. After you've chosen your keyword phrase, use it consistently throughout the page. For example, a page with a Meta title of "White Hat SEO - White Hat SEO methods" could have this first paragraph of content: 

White hat SEO is the key to effective search engine optimization. If you're not using white hat SEO methods, none of your SEO techniques will be effective. 

• Linking

 

Black Hat SEO - Link Farming

The idea behind link farming is that you exchange links with other websites to boost your site's rank in search results. Search engines like Google examine how many sites are linking to yours when determining rank.

With a link farm, you've traded your link with many sites for the sole purpose of increasing your site's search rank. In effect, you're trying to fool the search engine into thinking your site is more popular than it really is.

White Hat SEO - Inbound Linking

When someone links to your blog post or a page on your site within their content, you have a quality inbound link. Unlike with black hat link farming, inbound linking is not a link list traded for the sake of boosting your search results. 

Creating content that is compelling attracts site visitors. It also captures the attention of other webmasters who are looking to create their own content with contextual links to your site. 

• Page Elements

 

Black Hat SEO - Doorway Pages

Doorway pages are known by many names, such as bridge pages, entry pages, gateway pages, jump pages and portal pages. These pages are created to spam search engines with a certain phrase. 

A doorway page is created to get traffic based on keyword phrases and then funnel those site visitors to the main site. Most search engines catch doorway pages and sites are penalized. 

White Hat SEO - Headings

A better use of page elements is to break up your page visually with SEO-friendly headings. An article using <H1>, <H2> and <H3> tags that make good use of your keywords has more weight in search engines than a page full of regular-sized text.