What Is Blackhat SEO, White Hat SEO and Gray Hat SEO?
I received an email today showing me several
pieces of search engine optimization software
designed to generate traffic automatically
from high traffic sites like YouTube and
Craigs List.
My question is,”What’s makes something blackhat
as opposed to whitehat or ok?”
Here’s the sanitized email that raised the
question:
Hi Eric,
As you probably know, Willie Crawford is my marketing partner
for xxxxxx. And because of that, I frequently get little
“insider tips” from him that most people would kill for. 
Here’s one you DEFINITELY WANT TO KNOW ABOUT:
http://IncredibleWebsiteTraffic.com
Here’s the full story on this one:
A while back Willie asked me to review some stuff from
a fellow named Bishop Anders. Bishop has written a bunch of
software that’s … well, not exactly what you’d call “fancy
stuff”. In fact, it’s a bunch of fairly simple tools.
The thing is what you can DO with them!
The purpose of these tools is to generate free traffic to
your web sites, primarily by
Samsung
4 Responses to “What Is Blackhat SEO, White Hat SEO and Gray Hat SEO?”
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That’s a classic cheesey email. Nice one.
Blakchat SEO: Using less-than-ethical means to promote your website with search engine optimization. Ex: Changing the font to match your website (so you can’t see the words) and then listing hundreds or thousands of keywords at the bottom of the page, overfilling your content with keywords – using like 20, 30, 40% density etc…(Search engines who discover a site using these methods can ban it [blacklist] from showing up in their results….that’s no good.)
Whitehat SEO: Using only the best ethical methods of SEO promotion for your site/company. Examples: using keywords in content – but not too many. 10 to 15 out of 500 words, using keyword-filled metatags, page titles etc…
Grayhat….never heard of that one.
What kind of name is “Willie Crawford” ?
Good Luck.
Hello,
What is Black hat SEO ?
Within the SEO community, some optimization tactics are considered Black Hat SEO. These are tactics which are not considered to be good or fair by search engine operators, search engine optimizers, or web site visitors.
There is no generally accepted definition for black hat SEO. What may be considered appropriate by one webmaster may not be considered appropriate by another webmaster. In addition to personal differences, guidelines for appropriate conduct vary across web site categories. What might be considered acceptable for a web site in the gambling industry may not be equally acceptable for a health care web site.
Here are several guidelines for determining if a technique should be considered Black Hat SEO.
White hat SEO ?
A white hat is the hero or good guy, especially in computing slang, where it refers to an ethical hacker that focuses on securing and protecting IT systems. Such people are employed by computer security companies where these professionals are sometimes called sneakers.
What is Gray Hat ?
Gray hat SEO is changing in that some things that were once white, are now gray. Gray hat SEO includes things like publishing duplicate content. Multiple, otherwise white hat, sites that have the same content. Gray hat SEO also includes mild artificial linking schemes.
So if you were doing gray hat SEO you would perhaps use a tool like the Digital Point Coop Ad Network. You would probably more aggressively include keywords within your site’s content. You would certainly also do all the optimizations a white hat SEO would do, but you might take them a little further. For instance you might overly use image ALT tags to put in more keywords, even when it is unrelated to the specific image. With gray hat SEO you aren’t afraid of link exchanges and may even do an off-topic link exchange (dark gray to be sure) if you think it’ll raise your PageRank.
Mostly, gray hat SEO includes things that may be frowned upon, or could even result in a penalty, but they are very commonly done and they aren’t forbidden as strongly as black hat acts. For instance gray hat linking schemes may get your links devalued, whereas black hat linking schemes could get your site banned.
regards,
Raom.
These are terms that describe search optimization behavior. Black hat is a person that breaks search engine guidelines to manipulate the algorithm to gain top rankings, with white hat being the opposite (doing acceptable optimization tactics to get high rankings). Unfortunately the industry is a Grey hat approach, and it is not a black or white issue. Just don’t get caught.
The spirit of the law is what counts here.
Keep Google’s mission in mind. Google wants to match searchers with what they are actually looking for.
If your SEO activities are designed to match searchers with what they are REALLY looking for, chances are you are leaning toward the white hat end of the spectrum.