Black Hat Versus White Hat

By Author: Carole Wildman
Total Articles: 16
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PUT ON THE WHITE HAT

White hat SEO involves doing SEO by the book. It places integrity (or, at least, "legality") first and foremost when one is engaging in SEO writing. So, the content is written primarily for web surfers, and only secondarily to get the notice of search engines. Links and keywords and keyword phrases all happen "naturally" within the content; there's no scheming, no conniving, no forcing. The information is clear, accurate, and website-unique. When there are link backs, they are usually gained through mutual link exchange with another website that has agreed to it.

White hat SEO writers believe the content is king and that people who are looking for content should find quality content, not content that is loaded to draw their attention like webs for flies with a hidden sales purpose behind it. So, if they post a blog, for instance, they won't try to overload it with a well-researched keyword phrase; they will write from their heart (or creative intellect) and hope that they create enough quality--and just so happen, by chance, to get to fit in some keyword phrases to get up in the ...
... search engine results--that they'll attract a following and thus make money. In short, white hat SEO involves almost no calculating, although it might involve keyword research.

This sounds great from a websurfer's point of view, and it truly does avoid the problem of getting flagged by webcrawlers as a spammer. Unfortunately, due to the structure of the Internet and the way search engines and webcrawlers work these days, white hat SEO can take quite a long time to work--and that's if it even does. It could take years for an article or post to attract attention. Meanwhile, where is your Internet content writing career going? You may sink to the bottom and have to become an indentured servant with a j-o-b.

PUT ON THE BLACK HAT

On the other hand, there's black hat SEO. As you might imagine, black hat SEO is the polar opposite of white hat SEO. Those who write black hat SEO do all they can to manipulate and structure their content so that it's really all about getting to the top of search engine results pages and drawing in as many people as possible for a hidden agenda's purpose (selling them something). Quality of the content is a distant second to utility. The writing itself may be hackneyed and of a quality so poor that it would never, ever be published anywhere beyond the virtual reality of the Internet--and even then would be rejected by some sites. It does not necessarily inform a websurfer about anything and it might be way off topic from the website where it is placed. The writer of black hat SEO does not care if the content is murky--all that he cares about is weaving his tangled web to lure in potential buyers of some product.

Writers of black hat SEO are coldly calculating. They try to fit in as close to an overload of keyword phrases as they possibly can. The whole piece they write may amount to little more than a contrived pile of keywords and keyword phrases. The jam in as many links back to their splash pages and squeeze pages as possible in a grand display of shameless self promotion. The black hatter finds vulnerable places on the Internet where it's "safe" to warehouse links. They also use sleight of hand to dupe white hatters out of supposedly agreed upon mutual link backs, so they get a link while white hatters don't.

Black hat SEO is a content producer's get rich quick scheme. The black hatters are willing to risk being kicked off of search engines as spammers by skirting the edge of legality and integrity in order to make fast, potentially big money. While less than 1% of white hat SEO websites make money, over 90% of black hat SEO websites make money.

Black hat SEO writers, like the computer hackers of the 1980s, are becoming more sophisticated to get around the increasingly effective webcrawler algorithms that can spy out their dirty tricks. Black hat SEO e-books and blogs already exist to aid these shameless marketeers.

CONCLUSION

It all depends on what you are about as a webmaster or content producer whether you wear the white or the black SEO hat. If you care about the quality that gets published on the Internet and your own reputation for quality, you'll be a white hat SEO writer--and you will likely suffer financially. If you want to write for the money, honey, and you are willing to risk search engine flagging and a bad reputation, do the black hat SEO. Hopefully, though, you can learn to strike a balance between the two and flourish with a touch of gray.
The Author enjoys working from home and making money online through internet marketing.

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