SEO for Blogs – The White Hats vs. the Black Hats

Sunday, December 28th, 2008 newcorridor

The SEO practice that uses unethical techniques and tricks to artificially improve the search engine rankings of a website is considered to be “Black Hat” SEO.

There’s a lot to gain achieving top rankings in the search engines. For businesses that depend on search engine traffic, a lot can be at stake. So no surprise that there is a contingent of Black Hat SEO practitioners that attempt to get ahead by cheating or gaming the search engines.

It never ceases to amaze me that people think they can outsmart the search engines and build a long term sustainable business model by attempting to cheat. Sure, it may be possible to find a hole or soft spot in a search engine’s algorithms, and exploit that weakness for temporary advantage.

But the holes get plugged pretty fast. Let’s see. Google hires legions of computer engineers and mathematicians at the top of their game, and funnels many millions of dollars into research and development to improve and evolve the search engine.

Do people honestly believe they can take Google on by manipulating the search engine? A bit arrogant and foolish if you ask me.

Bottom line, Google works extremely hard to insure that the search engine returns relevant results that are useful and helpful to users. Google’s business model depends on it. They don’t sit still for long when they determine that a hole needs to be plugged, or an algorithm needs to shift to protect the integrity of the search results.

Typically, a “Black Hat” SEO technique might result in a short or temporary spike in traffic, but when Google discovers the aberration, the filters kick in and bring matters back into balance. And that brief traffic spike comes back down to earth. Black Hat generated traffic is not dependable for the long term, and it’s a risky notion to build a business on such a weak foundation.

Black Hat generated traffic most often exhibits a short-lived spike pattern as follows:

Black Hat SEO traffic graph

The opposite of Black Hat SEO, search engine friendly ethical SEO techniques and methods are considered “White Hat“. White Hat SEO methods don’t offend the search engines and insure your website will have the staying power to generate long-term sustainable traffic. A much better foundation on which to build your business.

The search engines actually tell you what they want. Good relevant content, on target and on theme, that provides useful and helpful results for users of the search engine. All your really need to focus on is “give the search engines what they want”.

White hat SEO builds traffic slowly in increments over time. White hat generated traffic tends to establish a slow and steady uptrend as follows:

White Hat SEO traffic graph

White hat SEO is about win/win all the way around.

Search engines win when they’re supplied with website content that is clear, relevant and on topic, and contains the quality information that their visitors search for. When this happens consistently, people come back often to use the search engine, and obviously that’s good for the search engine.
Searchers win when they get the results from the search engines they are after. For example, a user searches for “digital camera batteries” and the search engine points them to a page about “digital camera batteries”. The searcher is happy.
Website publishers win when they receive quality traffic from the search engines and visitors show up who are interested in what their website has to offer.

If it sounds a little bit like the good guys trying to triumph over the bad guys, it really has more to do with the competitive nature of conducting business online. In the end, stick to the white hat SEO methods. It’s simply better for your business.

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