The world can be an unfair and often dangerous place. There are always people who are looking to break the rules and gain an advantage over their competitors, and the internet is a place that is rife with this kind of behaviour. *insert scary music*
If there’s a way to gain an advantage, then there are going to be businesses and individuals who will bend the rules for personal gain.
As shown in this article at https://hellobeverley.com/seo-business-essential/, search engine optimization is one of the most essential components of any business. Regardless of how big or small you are, SEO is a major factor in your success and reach. Poor SEO means people won’t find your business and good SEO means you’ll be at the top page of a relevant Google search.
Unfortunately, SEO is one of those questionable areas where companies can abuse Google’s algorithms in order to gain an unfair advantage. So in this post, we’re going to discuss a rather old (but still relevant) concept known as white hat SEO.
What is white hat SEO?
White hat SEO usually refers to tactics that encourage organic growth. For example, this page on backlinking at https://unravelseo.com/seo/backlinking/ is a great example of white hat SEO. It’s all about building a network of relevant and high-quality content that entices your users, gets them to engage with your business and makes you a more reliable and trustworthy company.
In comparison, black hat SEO refers to practices that are based around abusing Google’s search algorithms to maintain a high position on relevant searches. For example, they could be abusing keywords, they could be manipulating their domain authority, and they could be spamming backlinks on hundreds or even thousands of low-quality websites to grow their popularity.
These strategies are frowned upon by both internet users and Google themselves. In fact, if you’re found using black hat strategies, then you might be blacklisted from Google. The process to recover your website can be very long and time-consuming, and it essentially makes your business impossible to discover.
If it’s so dangerous, why do people trust black hat SEO?
It’s mainly because it’s seen as a low-risk way of getting your business up the Google search rankings. People tend to use some questionable strategies which are hard to detect by Google. If anything, you can just feign innocence and have your website restored in Google’s index.
In addition, short-term gains can often be worth it for unscrupulous businesses. They don’t really care if their website is eventually blacklisted because if their name is being spread over the internet, it will continue to exist on social media and they can just use other platforms to reach out to their audience.
In short, it’s a very enticing strategy for businesses that want short-term gains. However, we highly suggest against it as Google’s algorithms are constantly being improved, making it extremely easy for them to refine their search feature to favour organic SEO over deceptive methods.