Know about Black Hat, White Hat, and Grey Hat SEO Techniques

Veronica Smith
4 min readSep 3, 2020

What is SEO (Search Engine Optimization)?

SEO is the acronym for Search Engine Optimization. It consists of a series of optimization techniques, disciplines, and strategies that are implemented on the pages of a website or blog to improve its search engine rankings.

Optimizing sites and blogs through the use of on-page SEO techniques to improve the web positioning of your pages and positioning your company in the first results of Google.

Mostly 90% of people who search on Google only click on the search results that appear on the first page. The main goal of SEO is to increase the volume of organic traffic and ensure more visibility for web pages.

Difference between SEO and SEM?

Although at first, they may seem to refer to similar actions given the similarity of their acronyms, you should pay close attention because they refer to completely different actions. Let’s go one by one.

SEO = Organic Positioning

As you may already know, SEO refers to all those actions that you can take inside or outside your website to optimize its positioning in search engines organically. This last point is key since organic means “no payment.

With an SEO strategy, you do not pay Google or any other search engine to gain positions in the SERP. It’s your valuable content and your optimizations that earn those spots in their own right.

SEM = Payment Positioning

SEM- Search Engine Marketing — refers to those strategies that include the use of paid advertisements. With an SEM strategy you create an advertising campaign so that when a user enters a search, your site appears before the organic results in the form of an advertisement, as long as it matches the user’s search intention.

What is Black Hat SEO?

We understand black hat SEO as the set of techniques used to position yourself in search engines in a “fast” way and bypassing Google’s guidelines. Speaking clearly, it is cheating with users as well as search engines by providing wrong and inappropriate information. These techniques are considered unethical by the search engines themselves and if they catch you using them, it is most likely that they will end up penalizing your website and disappear from the search results temporarily or permanently.

Most used Black Hat SEO Techniques

In our SEO Agency in New Zealand, we don’t use any black hat method. Here are several black hat techniques you must know about. To keep your website safe from penalized by Google:

· Cloaking

· Keyword Stuffing

· Spinning Text you want to INCREASE the visits to your website?

· Hidden Links

· Automated Content

· PBN (Private Blog Network)

· Over-Optimisation of the Anchor Text

What is Gray Hat SEO?

Gray hat SEO is a set of techniques and methods that generally do not adhere to Google’s guidelines but still can be considered acceptable. It is the middle way between White Hat and Black Hat SEO. It is technically legal, but risky sometimes.

Gray Hat SEO could work for you if it’s done in the right way. In general, using some of these techniques is not recommended because they have a manipulative nature like black hat SEO, but in essence, they do not violate Google’s guidelines. It could reap similar benefits to white hat SEO strategies.

What is White Hat SEO?

White Hat SEO is the name given to techniques that are considered ethical, correct and that comply with the guidelines imposed by search engines to push your website position.

It is clear to all those interested in the subject that there are a large number of ways to gain such positioning, however, among all of them, the White Hat is the least aggressive variant of SEO that manages to generate positive results in the medium and long term.

White Hat SEO is one in which the techniques used to meet the quality guidelines of the main search engines. For me, this strategy is the most optimal, because in the end it is based on achieving authority by working on quality.

The results of White Hat SEO are generally obtained in the long term. It is based on the quality of the product, service, or content offered, and the natural mentions obtained from other high DA and relevant web pages.

Some Major On-Page SEO Optimisation Tips

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Veronica Smith

I like to write on different topics such as shopping, relationship, beauty, food, hairstyles, pets, automotive, home improvement, healthcare and much more.