There is no question that to promote your website and get it "ranked higher" in the search engines, many SEO (search engine optimization) techniques must be employed. A few terms have been coined over the years referring to "white hat" verses "black hat" search engine optimization. What does this mean? Which should I use (or ask for from my webmaster?) Will one work better, yielding better results?
In general, White Hat SEO techniques typically conform to regulations and make a concerted effort to involve no deception, no exaggerated keyterm stuffing, and not posting excessive or misleading content in order to achieve backlinks. Black Hat SEO [again, typically] may employ techniques which are considered "unethical" by search engines. That considered, many novice website owners, when writing for their website, could unwittingly overuse keyterms and possibly delve into the "grey" or even "black" hat area, and this could cause the search authorities [generally, we mean GOOGLE] to penalize your pages or content. Unfortunately, you will never be notified or asked to correct anything if your rank drops for any reason. To check the status and ranking of your website on any given day (unless you are employing fancy backend scripts), you can just google your search term and see where it comes up.
To keep your website in the safe (white hat) area, use techniques such as research, quality content, analysis, web design, and relevant meta tags. In general, just be truthful and honest in your approach! Black Hat SEO methods comprise of blog comment spam, link farming, keyword stuffing, hidden links, and cloaked pages. Now we know what you are thinking: "I've seen a million websites full of SPAM, and they seem to be prospering, and they always have the #1 spots! They are actually keeping the honest websites from getting seen, stuck on page 2, 3, 4, etc" Yes, there are many, many people who will stop at nothing to get around the system. The good part about it is: every search authority continually updates their search algorithms and database regularly to find and penalize offending websites. It's a daily process for Google to spider and properly catalogue the content on each webpage, so your page content is not going to be ignored. Registering with Google, Bing, and Yahoo webmaster tools will also be of help, to submit your new pages regularly. Human staff are also on the watch to examine website content, and to be red-flagged, or "sandboxed" means the site will be removed from the search results.
With all the above points considered, it's clear what the difference between White Hat vs Black Hat SEO is, and if you are new to the SEO game, you'll want to use these tips to guide you in your website promotion and ranking efforts!
