At the beginning of 2020, there were over 1.74 billion websites on the internet, and this number is only growing exponentially. So, if you’re a business owner, you need to know what SEO is and why it makes such a difference to your business’s discoverability and reach. 

However, it’s not just SEO that you need to know about, but you need to be aware of the different types of SEO - black hat and white hat. There are some huge differences between black hat and white hat SEO, with one taking a more human-centred approach and one focusing on optimising a site in an unethical way.

If you’re not sure what SEO is, why it’s so important, and what the difference between black hat and white SEO is, don’t panic. We’ve put this article together to give you the lowdown on SEO and the different types of SEO, so you’ll be ready to optimise your site in the most ethical way possible.

What Is SEO and Why Is It Important?

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimisation. This basically means that by utilising a variety of factors on your website, you can increase the ranking on a search engine and therefore increase your discoverability and improve the amount of organic traffic going to your website. 

There are so many factors that affect SEO ranking, and the SEO algorithm is constantly changing, especially if you’re looking at Google SEO. However, there are a few things that make a huge impact on SEO that you should be focusing on when creating and adding content to your website, such as site speed, original content with SEO keywords, links to and from your website, and tags.

SEO is obviously important to your business because you want to drive organic traffic to your website and increase the discoverability of your site. Essentially, you want to have the aim of being one of the top URLs that come up when someone searches for keywords that are relevant to your business, and SEO is vital for these results to occur.

Differences Between Black Hat SEO and White Hat SEO

Black Hat SEO

Black hat SEO, also known as unethical SEO, is a type of SEO that goes against all advice and guidelines of a search engine such as Google. Websites that use black hat SEO are looking for short term profits and aren’t concerned with user experience.

Focuses On Tricking The Search Engine

A website that uses black hat SEO will not be concerned with the visitor experience, meaning that the content on the site might not actually benefit the visitor. 

Instead, black hat SEO focuses on tricking the search engine by doing things like using scraped content, using doorway pages, cloaking pages, and using non-related links. 

Works Using Duplicate Content

Duplicate, scraped, or plagiarised content on the internet is a huge no-no, but black hat SEO uses this kind of content to trick a search engine and increase search engine ranking.

Duplicate content refers to a website that posts the same content on multiple pages, while scraped or plagiarised content is a website taking content from another website and reposting it as its own - this is actually illegal. 

Uses Hidden Content And Links

One important factor that affects SEO is the quantity of content on a page, with long articles doing better than shorter ones, and people that practice black hat SEO know this. However, instead of making the effort to increase the quantity of quality content, they will hide content to make posts appear longer to a search engine. 

Another black hat SEO trick is doing the same with links. Link building is an important factor in SEO, and those that practise black hat SEO will add a variety of hidden links on pages to increase search engine ranking.

White Hat SEO

White hat SEO, also know as ethical SEO, is the correct type of SEO that follows search engine guidelines. White hat SEO focuses on giving improving the visitor experience on a website, whilst following guidelines, to improve search engine ranking. 

Focuses On Improving Visitor Experience 

Unlike black hat SEO that focuses on tricking the search engine and cares very little for visitor experience, white hat SEO focuses on making sure the visitor experience is good so that search engine ranking increases. 

This means that there will be original content, fast site speed, high-quality website design, and the website as a whole will be easy and enjoyable to look around.

Improves Search Engine Rank In The Long Run

As mentioned above, black hat SEO focuses on short term success, but white hat SEO focuses on improving a website so that the search engine ranking improves in the long run. Following guidelines of search engines like Google, the website will ethically climb up the search rank.

Original, High-Quality Content

White hat SEO focuses on producing original, high-quality content that will actually be of benefit to site visitors. With relevant links, labelled images, good spelling, and grammar, white hat SEO focuses on high-quality content to improve user experience and therefore improve search engine ranking.

SEO is actually something that we specialize in, so if you’re needing a hand making sure that your SEO strategy is as powerful and ethical as it can be, get in touch with us, and one of our SEO specialists will get back to you.