Search Engine Optimization isn’t a new thing anymore, but there are still plenty of misunderstandings about what it means and what is allowed. Join us for a breakdown of SEO ethics for the Information Age to make sure you aren’t putting your site or brand at risk.
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Black Hat SEO
Black Hat SEO refers to the aggressive and unethical techniques some marketers use to manipulate search engines and achieve higher rankings for their website. These tactics often get results at the expense of site content and user experience. Keyword stuffing, for example, either results in excessive and unnatural language, or a page filled with distracting content in order to rank for a particular keyword. Black Hat SEO also includes practices like buying backlinks in attempt to boost authority rankings and cloaking, which involves showing search engines different content than users are seeing. Overall, these practices are unethical because they are attempting to gain the benefits of search engine rankings without providing the quality content that deserves it.
Beyond being unethical, Black Hat SEO practices can often backfire. In the past, some of these tactics wouldn’t have seen consequences, but these days, search engines are on to these tricks and will dole out big penalties to websites caught using them.
Grey Hat SEO
As the spectrum might suggest, Grey Hat SEO falls somewhere in the middle between the clearly problematic Black Hat practices and the approved White Hat techniques. It pushes the boundaries of what’s allowed, often occupying ethical grey areas and manipulative half-truths. Grey Hat SEO includes practices like offering payment for positive reviews without disclosing this arrangement, or “article spinning,” which is basically publishing high numbers of low-quality articles by rephrasing content and using synonyms to make it appear unique.
Just like with Black Hat SEO, there are big risks and consequences to using Grey Hat tactics. While they may pay off in the immediate, search engines like Google are constantly changing their algorithms to detect practices like this. What’s grey today could be black tomorrow. When detected, your website health and brand credibility could be called into question.
White Hat SEO
After all that, it may feel like you have to be on edge and tread lightly to ensure you don’t upset the SEO gods, but that’s really not the case. Ethics for the Information Age don’t have to be complicated. If you’re not trying to manipulate search results, you’re probably fine. White Hat SEO practices to improve your website’s visibility are simple:
- produce quality content that engages and meets the needs of a human user,
- acquire backlinks naturally through building relationships and providing content others want to link to, and
- optimize your website structure, like meta tags and headings, to allow people and search engines to better understand what you offer.
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The big take-away: create the content your users want to see. Search engines are constantly changing their algorithms to reflect the content that human users like and interact with. If you’re providing that, you’re already on the right track. Then you just want to make sure you’re following the rules and guidelines that Google provides for site maintenance and presentation of that content. These can be a little overwhelming and confusing at times, but you know who loves doing this? We do. Let us know if you want us to dig into your site health and improve your visibility the White Hat way.
