White and black hat search engine optimization are two competing methods of helping sites rank better in search engines. One is ethical, the other promises fast results. This article will teach you the differences between white hat and black hat search engine optimization and why you should always choose the ethical route.

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Everyone is talking about Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and how it can help their online business. Optimizing your website to appear higher on search engines not only helps with visibility to new customers, but also boosts trust in your website. More and more creative firms are offering this service to help raise rankings and conversions of customers.

Some companies, however, are offering unethical and downright misleading claims about their search optimization abilities. Have you been promised to be at the top of Google within 24 hours or that your content will go viral within a week? They may be able to deliver on these promises but the consequences of rapid, aggressive, and unethical search engine movement hurt your business more than they help.

In this article, you'll learn about black hat and white hat search engine optimization and discover why white hat SEO is the best solution for your business.

How Can Web Development Be Ethical or Unethical?

Over the years, standard practices have evolved between web developers and designers that guide our business practices. While standards are not necessarily hard and fast, these standards are the norm between agencies. Ethical web development practices include delivering on promises made in proposals and estimates, working with the client to shape a website, and the like. These seem like pretty simple and straight-forward business practices - and they are!

Out of these standards sprang the standards for search engine optimization, the practice of optimizing and managing your website to appear well on search engines such as Google and Yahoo. These standards combine the rules of search engines to produce a community of web designers, agencies, and analysts that are constantly working towards new techniques and strategies to boost search engine results and get better returns on search engine optimization.

Unfortunately, some businesses take advantage of this trust system between designers, clients, and search engines, and exploit weaknesses within the infrastructure. They go against these reasonable standards to ensure that their customers' websites receive unfair boosts in search engines. This is called black hat search engine optimization.

White Hat SEO vs Black Hat SEO

White Hat Search Engine Optimization

White hat SEO is the type of optimization practices that follow the rules and guidelines set up by the major search engines. Not only are their written guidelines to this practice, there are also unwritten rules that specify what behaviors are acceptable amongst analysts and search engine professionals. This is the hallmark of ethical SEO - understood frameworks that are honored between companies. These practices can include keyword research and implementation, regular update of content that is relevant to users' interests, networking with other businesses for link exchanges, and code optimization, amongst others.

Black Hat Search Engine Optimization
Black hat SEO, on the other hand, breaks the rules set down by search engines and strives to have the highest search engine results to maximize returns on the website. These analysts exploit the robots that crawl websites and their inability to determine between good and bad content. Examples of Black Hat SEO include hiding text in the website, stuffing excessive keywords into content and meta descriptions, and spamming comments on blogs with links to the website. They do things like "spamdexing" and "link stuffing" so that the robots will rank sites faster and higher. Sites that rely on black hat SEO are often times illegal or questionable sites that will be taken down quickly anyways, so they can be unethical without suffering the consequences to their business model.

You can think about white and black hat SEO like a used car dealership. White hat SEO is an ethical car dealer that is honest about the lifespan and history of the car and guarantees that they aren't selling you a product that breaks down in two months. Black hat search engine optimization, on the other hand, winds the odometer backwards, glues the bumper back on, and misleads you about the quality of the vehicle. The unsuspecting consumer buys it and, in two months, the car doesn't work. When they go back to the dealer to demand a refund, the dealer refuses because it was all in the fine print after all!

Consequences of Black Hat SEO

To some, black hat SEO sounds great- you get rapid results from minimal effort and you are now on the top of the search engine rankings. White hat SEO takes time and lots of work. What could possibly be wrong with black hat? Well, the major search engines are adamant about removing people who exploit their algorithms to get to the top. Once found, they can take your site off their search engines results and ban you from ever appearing again. Worse, if a habitual offender is found, they can ban all of the sites from the same person.

To say that the consequences of black hat search engine optimization are bad is an understatement. Not only will you probably be labeled a spammer but you also run the risk of being removed from Google and Bing entirely. When customers and interested folks try to find your site on Google and can't, why would they trust your site - thus why trust your business? Trusting unethical business practices to get your site to the top of the search engines is a risky endeavor that often has catastrophic results.

SEO is the Result of Careful Research, Monitoring, and Time

White hat search engine optimization is the way to go- it is reliable and does produce results. It does, however, take time and effort to manage and cultivate great keywords, incoming links, and fresh content for your site.

Chappell Graphics has been very careful over the years to make sure our Search Engine Optimization practices are ethical and completely in line with what are ethical and fair search engine optimization practices. As a business that has prided itself on its integrity, using black hat search engine optimization was, has, and never will be a part of the process we use to boost your site in the search engines.

Now we want to hear back from you: What are your thoughts on how search optimization works? Is it important to be ethical in your SEO practices? Heard any horror stories about black hat search engine optimization going badly? Leave your responses in the comments below, we'd love to generate a conversation about search engine optimization from your perspective!