Should You Stick With White Hat SEO Methods?

If you know anything at all about search engine optimisation, you have probably heard about black hat and white hat methods of getting results. Broadly speaking, white hat methods are those that have been approved as being usable by the search engines. Black hat methods on the other hand are those methods that may work for a short length of time, but they go against the rules and will result in the website being banned from the search engines.

This should answer the question posed by the title of this article. If you venture into using black hat methods - for example hiding strings of keywords written in white text on a white background - you will get banned eventually. It may happen immediately or it may take a short while, but it will happen. Search engines know all the black hat methods and the websites that use them have an unfair advantage over others in the results. They also cheat the readers, since they have climbed to the top of the search rankings through misdirection rather than quality of content.

You may have read articles that give advice about the use of black hat techniques. You may also be considering using certain methods yourself to try and rank more highly in Google and the other search engines. But we would not recommend you use any black hat methods at all. White hat methods are perfectly capable of getting you into the highest selection of search results, and they will not get you banned in the process.

If you are ever in any doubt about using a particular method of SEO, always research it before you use it. It is usually fairly easy to tell whether a method is going to be white or black hat. Black hat methods tend to be quite underhand and sneaky in many ways. Hiding information in any way is bound to be black hat for example, like the idea of writing text on a background of the same colour. It is clearly not there to aid the reader in any way.

Some webmasters insist on continuing to use these black hat search engine optimisation methods and it is sometimes easy to see why. They put up websites with the sole intention of making fast money from them. By the time the site is banned they could have made a nice income. But wouldn’t you rather spend time building a worthwhile site that could be around for many years to come?

In the end quality must be your watchword. Think about the value you are giving to your readers and how much worth they are getting from your site. If you write articles only to stuff them beyond belief with keywords, you are definitely venturing into black hat territory. As such you are also venturing further away from your audience and that will not put you squarely in white hat territory. Always think about what your website – and your reputation - are really worth.

Are You Planning to hire an SEO company ? Be careful and before signing them make sure are they going to use black hat or White hat optimisation techniques for your site and ask them Should You Stick With White Hat SEO Methods?