Different between white hat and black hat seo?

White hat seo is all about playing by Google's rules, whereas blackhat seo is telling google "lets see who wins".

Whitehat SEO follows Google's guidelines, blackhat doesn't. Those who make the most money in SEO are the no-hatters. They build both blackhat and whitehat sites with some grey in between.

myopic1 said:

Excellent summary. It's worth noting OP that all SEO is 'black hat' in Google's eyes...the second you create content or optimise a page to make it rank friendly, you're effectively gaming the system. Create content for fun and then think 'I wonder if that will help me rank?', you're now retrospective black hat.

Instead Google would prefer that we stumbled around in ignorance creating and sharing content because we feel like it not because it will help us rank. That's an impractical way of looking at SEO though, so BreaknBrix's definition still stands.

Click to expand...

Great summary BreaknBrix!

Myopic1 is completely accurate according to Google. Read the Google guidelines, quoted below. Any links you or someone else on your behalf creates to increase PR is against their guidelines. If you follow the general story about creating great content you will only be found if you are a media celebrity or have a great marketing campaign. White hat or Black hat, 99% of people dependent on search results have to build links to be a part of the game.

"Any links intended to manipulate PageRank or a site's ranking in Google search results may be considered part of a link scheme and a violation of Google's Webmaster Guidelines. This includes any behavior that manipulates links to your site or outgoing links from your site."

The difference between black hat SEO and white hat SEO has to do with the techniques used when trying to improve a website?s search engine ranking.


Black hat SEO refers to techniques and strategies used to get higher search rankings, and breaking search engine rules. Black hat SEO focuses on only search engines and not so much a human audience. Black hat SEO is typically used by those who are looking for a quick return on their site, rather than a long-term investment on their site. Some techniques used in black hat SEO include: keyword stuffing, link farming, hidden texts and links, and blog content spamming. Consequences of black hat SEO can possibly result in your site being banned from a search engine and de-indexed as a penalization for using unethical techniques.


White hat SEO refers to the use of techniques and strategies that target a human audience opposed to a search engine. Techniques that are typically used in white hat SEO include using keywords, and keyword analysis, doing research, rewriting meta tags in order for them to be more relevant, backlinking, link building as well as writing content for human readers. Those who use white hat SEO expect to make a long-term investment on their website, as the results last a long time.

White Hat SEO: Expensive and Slow. Once results are achieved no need to worry about any google update. You don't need to know what is penguin,panda etc
Structure and Design also play a great role to determine success of your website using White hat techniques.

Black Hat SEO: Comes in variety of Packages. Starting from $5 to $XXX. Results are generally fast and it can be attacked by google robots anytime. There may be chance when you wake up in the morning you see that your website has been completely de-indexed . Mostly used for Churn and burn websites and not for serious businesses.