When it comes to SEO, or search engine optimization, there are two very distinct styles. One style is considered to be a great way to get your website ranked, while the other is punishable by the lowering of your website’s ranking. The problem is, how do new (or inexperienced) website owners know which is which? Well, the best way to do that is to learn the difference between the different styles.

Blackhat SEO

Think of this version of SEO as the cowboys in the Old West who wore the black cowboy hats. Everyone knew to stay away from them, and for good reason. The same goes for this style of SEO. It causes more harm to your website than anything else, and it could result in you losing any positive benefit that your site once offered. Some common blackhat tactics include:

• Stuffing the content on your website with the keywords you want to rank for, in an unnatural fashion

• Hiding links and text within your content that causes redirects to other locations or websites

• Spinning content and having the same basic article on multiple websites

• Buying links from somewhere else or putting a massive amount of links within any of your web content

These all used to be commonplace, but once the different search engines started running algorithms, websites started losing out for these unnatural practices. The point of a website is to inform the visitors and the readers, so for those websites that did not live up to that definition, they faced the ranking consequences.

Whitehat SEO

This would be the equivalent of the cowboys wearing the white hats. They were the people turned to for safety and security. The same goes for current websites. Those ranked up high due to the fact that they are informative and safe are the ones to trust. You can read through their information and understand that the content was written to help customers know the truth about whatever product or service the content was about. These honest tactics helped the rank of these sites naturally rise, helping them be what searchers see at the top of their results. Some of the most common whitehat tactics include:

• Proper use of keywords in a natural fashion throughout your content, including headers, title, and occasionally used within the content

• Using links within your content sparingly to prove that your information is accurate, building trust with your visitors

• Insert meta tags and meta descriptions within the backend of your website so that the web crawlers can see what your site is about

• Using your content to attract readers with unique, informative, and engaging content of varying lengths

• Link to other sites that rank highly and are about the same type of topics as yours to show that both are there for the benefit of the readers

Whitehat SEO is what people should be using for any and every website they own. Using even one of the blackhat techniques can cause irreparable damage to your website.

Unless you have the time and availability to fix your website from top to bottom, then you should not even consider using any blackhat techniques. They can cause damage that you may or may not be able to fix, and it can cause a loss of trust in the people who did visit your site, making it to where they no longer want to visit your site because they do not trust the site’s intentions. You should always check to make sure your content is totally unique and helps inform the visitors of exactly what benefits your site can offer over the sites of your competitors.

SOURCES:

http://www.wordstream.com/black-hat-seo

http://computer.howstuffworks.com/search-engine-optimization2.htm

http://www.diffen.com/difference/Black_Hat_SEO_vs_White_Hat_SEO