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Black hats and white hats were used all the way back in the 1920s in Western films. They were an easy way for the audience to tell the difference between the hero and the villain.
The hero wore a white hat.
The villain wore a black hat.
The terminology has been adopted in various industries through the years, notably security.
Black hats and white hats are a way of describing malicious and ethical hackers.
The SEO industry has adopted the same phrasing in relation to SEO activity.
- White hat SEO.
- Black hat SEO.
What Is White Hat SEO?
White hat SEO means following the “rules”. Simply, you use only ethical tactics and follow search engine guidelines.
What Is Black Hat SEO?
Black hat SEO means using risky practices. You use tactics that can (and, let’s be honest, do) work. Until they don’t. These range from using tactics that go against guidelines from search engines to more dangerous activities (which can lead to manual actions).
But, says who?
This isn’t a legal issue, per se. Not following Google’s guidelines isn’t illegal. Though if you get caught doing some very nefarious SEO tactics (e.g., hacking), then you could face legal issues.
There is no governing body who determines what lies within ethical SEO practice.
It’s purely a general consensus among SEO professionals based on the guidelines given by the closest organizations we have to a governing body.
The search engines.
What Is Good & Bad Practice in SEO?
The only rules we have to go on in SEO are the ones given to us by the search engines.
At the end of the day, it is their platform.
Search engines get to decide what conditions must be met to feature on it.
The algorithms used by the major search engines have been developed over the years to combat obvious and unhelpful manipulation of the search results.
They are there to catch websites that go against the spirit of the ranking systems.
The search engines determine what is fair play and what is illicit behavior.
Google’s Guidelines
Google is well known for having quite clear webmaster guidelines that are used by SEO professionals to identify what could land a website in hot water if discovered.
Google calls our attention to the “Quality guidelines”, those that denote “the most common forms of deceptive or manipulative behavior”.
In these guidelines, we see mention of activity like “cloaking”, “doorway pages”, and “scraped content”.
The guidelines directly relate to the changes in Google’s algorithms over the years.
Penguin, Panda and Payday all included measures to lessen the presence of websites in the SERPs that don’t follow the guidelines.
The Difference Between Black Hat & White Hat
The core difference between black hat and white hat SEO is whether you are working in the spirit of the search engines’ guidelines.
There may be nuances to the guidelines that you find unclear, but are you working to meet the guidelines or get around them?
What Is Gray Hat SEO?
As with a lot of SEO, there are differing opinions on what gray hat SEO is.
Take the first page of Google’s results on “what is gray hat SEO” and you’ll see articles with a mixture of definitions, broadly falling into the categories of:
- It’s a mixture of white hat and black hat techniques.
- It’s a tactic that is currently either white or black hat but with changes to the ways search engines work could become the opposite in the future.
Both of these definitions have a commonality.
Gray hat SEO is neither black hat nor white hat, but something in the middle.
Either transitioning between the two, or a mixture of the two.
It’s a blurred line.
Not something that you would willingly inform Google you are doing.
Not something you should automatically be penalized for.
It’s not necessarily a bad practice, but it is being done with the intention to get ahead in the rankings.
Why Do These Definitions Matter?
Essentially, the use of white, black, and gray hat terminology is arbitrary.
What it arguably does do is help keep SEO practitioners in check when they are working on websites that they don’t own.
Black hat techniques, ones that deliberately go against the search engine guidelines, carry risks.
As such, websites that go against the guidelines could be penalized by an outright, or partial ban from the search engine.
That’s very serious if the website isn’t your own.
You may cause a business to lose its largest source of income if it can no longer be found through its main organic source.
In the absence of a governing body, clients of SEO pros do not have much to go off, except:
“Do you use only white hat techniques?”
A question I’ve heard prospective clients ask.
Examples
What are some activities you could place in the black, white, and gray hat categories?..
