What Hat Does Your Web Site Wear?
Black and White Hat SEO
Just as your job can include wearing many hats, so can your website. In fact the two types of hats in website design and promotion, black hat and white hat, are so polar and combative that they should be called helmets, not hats.
If you are not familiar with the terms …and are wondering which category your web site falls under, consider the checklists below:
Black Hat SEO
Your web site might be wearing a black hat if…
- You stuff keywords all over the site more than a thanksgiving turkey.
- Use hidden text (text that is the same color as its background) on the page to catch search engine spiders.
- You use cloaking tricks to display one page to search engines and another to visitors.
- You use doorway pages; empty useless pages solely designed to attract visitors.
- You redirect more than an airport ramp rat flagging in planes at the airport.
- You clone (duplicate) sites more than an English sheep gene researcher.
- You have more links than a Google search does.
White Hat SEO
You might be might be wearing a white hat if…
- You have grown your site organically.
- You have genuine reader-friendly content.
- Your pages are only optimized for what that page is actually about.
- Use authentic tagging (title tags, meta tags, image tags, h tags, etc)
- Use proper social media content and marketing tactics.
- Do blogging and blog linking without spamming.
- Use natural keyword optimization (without the keyword stuffing)
- Have reciprocal links and link building.
- Have content-rich pages where each page has its own UNIQUE content.
- Use proper forums for calls to action.
- Have a site map.
- Use RSS feeds.
- Submit to various directories in your genre.
- Use a robot.txt file.
White and black hats are considered adversarial—think of little angels and devils on your shoulders offering you advice and promises. They can be used congruently however it is not necessary, as doing just one tactic will suffice. Some pick and choose different techniques from each category.
The best advice someone can give you -- is to choose one ...preferably white hat SEO. Using black hat can get you penalized, temporarily or even permanently banned from Google. The risks simply aren’t worth it and in the end your site is not of high enough quality to keep users’ attention.
There are so many successful white hat tactics out there that they more than suffice, and can get your site all the attention that it deserves. The best use of time is in researching and implementing the wide variety of white hate SEO tactics available.
