Have you heard of the terms “Black Hat SEO” and “White Hat SEO”? Did you wonder what they meant? If so, it is important that you read on to understand the difference and make sure that you are using the right SEO tactics for your company’s campaign.
Black Hat SEO tactics are unethical strategies used to enhance one’s presence on search engine results pages (SERPs). You may have heard us say that there are no short cuts to SEO. Well, black hat SEO tactics are technically short cuts but they are against the rules and regulations of search engines and will most likely result in your website being banned. Below are a few common tactics to avoid.
Keyword stuffing
Placing your keyword in your content an overly large amount of times
Hidden Text
Setting text to the same color as the background so humans cannot see it but search engines can
Doorway pages
Pages added to a website for the sole purpose of targeting a specific keyword while providing little value to a visitor.
Interlinking
The practice of building multiple websites and linking them to one another in order to build overall link popularity
Link Buying
Paying sites to link to yours
White Hat tactics in SEO are any strategies that maintain the integrity of your website and ethically work to increase your ranking on SERPs. These tactics are safe to use and will help your overall SEO campaign.
Internal Linking
Adding text links that link to all of your internal pages
Reciprocal Linking
Exchanging links with other webmasters, partners, customers, etc.
Content Creation
Creating quality, unique content that is of value to your visitors
Appropriate Keyword usage
Using your keyword in context, 3-5 times per page.
There are a handful of additional black hat tactics that you should avoid as well as white hat tactics you may want to consider trying. If you do not feel comfortable handling your SEO campaign, a third party SEO specialist, like Informatics Inc., can assist. Overall, be cognizant of what tactics you are using so as not to risk being banned from search engines, ruining your SEO campaign.
