Black Hat SEO vs White Hat SEO: PROS and CONS

For the past few days I've been reading up on SEO, and I recently asked an SEO (mostly regarding building backlinks) related question in the White Hate SEO forum, but I'm curious to get multiple perspectives on this.

As far as I'm concerned, White Hat SEO consists of filling in your meta data and building trusted backlinks manually via guest posting, getting listed in directories, social bookmarks and such. Whereas Black Hat SEO relies more on automated backlink building bots like Senuke. Let me know if I'm missing any major parts of the puzzle here, since this is also somewhat part of my question.

Anyhow my main question is what are the pros and cons between the two, and what type of situations might call for using Black Hat over White Hat or vice versa?

All SEO is blackhat SEO in the eyes of Google

Nobody could beat this reply.Huge!

brainst0rm said:

For the past few days I've been reading up on SEO, and I recently asked an SEO (mostly regarding building backlinks) related question in the White Hate SEO forum, but I'm curious to get multiple perspectives on this.

As far as I'm concerned, White Hat SEO consists of filling in your meta data and building trusted backlinks manually via guest posting, getting listed in directories, social bookmarks and such. Whereas Black Hat SEO relies more on automated backlink building bots like Senuke. Let me know if I'm missing any major parts of the puzzle here, since this is also somewhat part of my question.

Anyhow my main question is what are the pros and cons between the two, and what type of situations might call for using Black Hat over White Hat or vice versa?

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White hat SEO is not really what you have described.

Whitehat SEO is all about creating content and not creating links artificially. Some basic on page SEO is still okay because you are helping google evaluate your content.

Whitehat really has one moto: "Build it and they will come."

The pros of whitehat are that it is less likely you would be hit by any algorithmic updates. The con is that you are unlikely to get to page 1 in a high competition area without the help of google adwords.

Blackhat the perks are obvious: rank much quicker, artificially inseminate back links to help you rise to the top.
The cons are obvious: You are playing with fire. What you do today may not work tomorrow so your hard work could be ruined overnight.

Thats a simplistic view of it anyway.

Google could not care less if your website is black hat, brown hat, grey hat, white hat, see through hat, invisible hat, woolly hat, all Google care about is forcing people to use Adwords, as they are not happy with the billions they are already pulling in.

White hat SEO is a mith.

Link building is considered black hat. So, in essence, if you want to remain white hat, don't do any at all.

yah I agree white hat means just build the site and let the back links come naturally.

So then if I wanted to start some type of SEO business, it seems that it'd be wise to stay closer to the white hat side (technically, more gray hat) right? Proper meta organization and structure, proper tag and keyword usage, and manual trusted backlink building. Looks like black hat automated methods are far too risky and borderline illegal to use on a potential clients site.

Basically I just want to know from you guys with experience that it is possible to rank up a smaller,not so competitive site within a month or so (ie:website for a local restaurant,speciality shop, etc. in town).

To put it simple white hat is no hat anymore ...

Well ... i think White hat seo is basically doing things with in the rules that google writes for the ranking. Doing everything as per their rules ..... which takes hell lot of time !!

Black hat seo .... its all about how you reach there against their rules

fc-dh said:

All SEO is blackhat SEO in the eyes of Google

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Exactly what I came in here to post... I like this guy!

Aty said:

White hat SEO is a mith.

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Yup. Mith is also a myth.

brainst0rm said:

So then if I wanted to start some type of SEO business, it seems that it'd be wise to stay closer to the white hat side (technically, more gray hat) right? Proper meta organization and structure, proper tag and keyword usage, and manual trusted backlink building. Looks like black hat automated methods are far too risky and borderline illegal to use on a potential clients site.

Basically I just want to know from you guys with experience that it is possible to rank up a smaller,not so competitive site within a month or so (ie:website for a local restaurant,speciality shop, etc. in town).

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Grey hat / blackhat - its basically the same if you think about it.

If you are starting an SEO business I would seriously make sure that you know exactly what you are doing. This will save you a lot of head aches down the road with your clients.

It's very important that you understand your clients expectations but most importantly they also understand that SEO is no exact art. You can't guarantee anything. What worked one day could wipe your client out the next day if the algo changes or your link partner is wiped out.

Tread carefully with clients.

You are probably best off trying to rank some of your own sites first so you can get a proper feel of how it all works before you attempt it for money for someone else.

Good luck! wishing you the best.

Whitehat SEO = No link building of any kind

Blackhat SEO = Link building of any kind

Matt Cutts has made this clear by now.

Both are relates to the specific techniques used when trying to improve the search engine ranking of a website or web page.

About SEO, SEO is the process by which volume and quality of traffic to a web site can be improved. The higher ranked a site is higher on the search engine results pages (SERP), the more visitors the website naturally gets. Owing to the rising importance of search engines like Google, SEO is a much sought-after internet marketing strategy.

Black hat SEO refers to attempts to improve rankings in ways that are not approved by search engines and involve deception. They go against current search engine guidelines. White hat SEO refers to use of good practice methods to achieve high search engine rankings. They comply with search engine guidelines.

OK..pros and cons of Both SEO types.

Differentiate Depends on Meaning, status, result & techniques.

Meaning:

Blackhat SEO - Techniques used to get higher search rankings in an unethical manner.
whitehate SEO - Conforms to search engine designs and involves no deception.

Status:

BH - Disapproved by search engines.
WH - Approved by search engines.

Result:

BH - Site is eventually banned, de-indexed or penalized through lower rankings.
WH - Results last a long time.

Techniques:

BH - Black hat SEO techniques include keyword stuffing, doorway and cloaked pages, link farming, hidden texts and links, blog comment spam.

WH - White hat SEO techniques include research, analysis, re- write meta tags to be more relevant, content improvement and web redesign.

Very useful insight and advice in here, thank you everyone for your input. Definitely have a better understanding of it now.

brainst0rm said:

So then if I wanted to start some type of SEO business, it seems that it'd be wise to stay closer to the white hat side (technically, more gray hat) right? Proper meta organization and structure, proper tag and keyword usage, and manual trusted backlink building. Looks like black hat automated methods are far too risky and borderline illegal to use on a potential clients site.

Basically I just want to know from you guys with experience that it is possible to rank up a smaller,not so competitive site within a month or so (ie:website for a local restaurant,speciality shop, etc. in town).

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The level of SEO stupidity shown in this post is astounding.

fc-dh said:

All SEO is blackhat SEO in the eyes of Google

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irdeto said:

Whitehat really has one moto: "Build it and they will come."

Aty said:

White hat SEO is a mith.

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verilix said:

Link building is considered black hat. So, in essence, if you want to remain white hat, don't do any at all.

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niloydaemons said:

yah I agree white hat means just build the site and let the back links come naturally.

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Evey bit of that is bullshit. Google cannot exist without backlinks.

You are allowed (in fact encouraged) to promote your business online, and that includes leaving a link where it will benefit the promotion of your website.

You are not allowed to build links for the express purpose of affecting the ranking of your site.

If you do not know the difference, you do not know SEO.

The idea that if I put a link to my business on my facebook account, twitter, pinterest, instagram, and so on will get me punished by Google is patently absurd.

brainst0rm said:

Basically I just want to know from you guys with experience that it is possible to rank up a smaller,not so competitive site within a month or so (ie:website for a local restaurant,speciality shop, etc. in town).

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In a month, maybe not, and you need to do local SEO, not psuedo-SEO by backlinks.

niloydaemons said:

yah I agree white hat means just build the site and let the back links come naturally.

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I don't think you will be happy with whitehat backlinks, if you don't have huge traffic.

For me white SEO is only on-page SEO, everything that is off-page is black SEO.
And don't think that white SEO is safe because its not, as a matter of fact even if you don't do any kind of SEO your site is not safe.