On today’s internet, the best practices of Google and other search giants are designed to facilitate relevant results for searchers.
SEO methods that attempt to manipulate search results using means in violation of searches best practices are ethically at odds with searches goals and stand to be punished for it – we call this kind of SEO “black hat” because it is in contravention of Google best practices.
Those seeking to build healthy backlink profiles and obtain enhancements in their search rankings need to be aware of the importance of not just generating backlinks – but generating the right kind of backlinks; the right way.
In this article we’re going to explore the importance of high-quality backlinks and detail why it is always the best policy to pursue white-hat backlinking strategies.
The reader will be introduced to the purposes behind working with domestic writers to hand-craft niche-specific content, hosted off-site in the form of guest posting. .
We will look at the long-term impact these best practices can and will have in terms of their effect upon overall SEO objective attainment and more.
Understanding White-Hat SEO
To understand White-Hat SEO it must first be understood that all SEO is an attempt to maximize one or more ranking factors for a given website.
In a very real sense you could say all SEO is an attempt to influence, but some SEO is an attempt to manipulate.
This is as true for backlinking specifically as it is SEO generally.
Google is accepting, even encouraging of websites taking initiatives and following their best practices in order to improve rankings while at the same time taking a nearly zero-tolerance stance against manipulation.
The difference between these two treatments is pretty straight forward – anything which threatens the core functionality of search (manipulation of results) is a detriment to Google’s core business.
For many years Google and others struggled with search manipulation, due mostly to immature technologies.
In 2012 Google released the Penguin update which vastly curtailed black-hat SEO practices which were manipulative, such as forum spamming, link farming and more.
These practices are not only no longer viable, they are outright detrimental to websites ability to rank as they can incur the wrath of Google in the form of penalties if found to be in use.
What this all boils down to is the fact that following best practices (white hat SEO) is really the only viable option for websites which want to rank in the long-term.
For this reason and several more, it’s crucial that everyone considering SEO today have a well grounded understanding of these techniques and their impact.
Differentiation – Good, Bad & Otherwise
SEO can be conceived to exist upon a spectrum ranging from completely unethical and manipulative techniques to those which as grey or just “somewhat” unethical or questionable, on to white-hat or completely ethical techniques following best practices.
Without delving too far into definitions, it’s critical that those in the marketplace be able to differentiate what they are buying and to know where it falls on the invisible spectrum of black hat to white hat SEO.
How can you know the difference? Well, numerous ways.
Firstly, White Hat SEO services – both on your website and off site such as backlinks – will adhere stringently to Google’s best practices.
The real issue arises with services that contain or are composed of questionable practices such as PBN’s (Private Blog Networks) or scammy backlinks, sold by shady merchants.
The problem with the above practices is that, while they are frowned upon, they are not directly in contravention of anything technically in a hard and fast kind of way. Therefore in practice, these kinds of SEO service components are in a gray area, they would be considered Gray-Hat SEO.
Explicitly Black-Hat SEO services are usually pretty obvious to spot and include SEO methods such as forum spamming, email spamming, website comments section spamming, link farms and much more.
There are no hard and fast rules when it comes to identifying criminal services but it is generally a good idea to do basic due diligence upon whomever you are dealing with for SEO.
Though you may not be aware the consequences for search manipulation can be incredibly costly and even financially ruinous.
If you run a website and depend upon it being found by prospects to run your business then you should be very careful who you let run your SEO campaign.
If your website is found to be manipulating search engine results and it receives either an automatic penalty or receives the dreaded “manual review”, it can lose its rankings, sometimes permanently.
What does all this mean? Well, for most It’s very simple – it means that there is only one kind of SEO worth pursuing anymore – a best practices based one.
The Long Term
SEO isn’t a battle – it’s a never ending war and it’s fought amongst those trying to rank for increasingly specific (and valuable) keywords.
The best way to judge any search strategy is over the medium to long-term.
This begs the question – how do things end up for people who follow different strategies?
For those following black-hat strategies, their long-term prospects are usually pretty grim.
History repeats often telling the same story of black-hat websites that initiate campaigns, experience short-lived success only to be found out, penalized severely by search and then deranked into obscurity.
For gray-hat strategies that try to tip-toe around the rules, bending them where they can and avoiding scrutiny where possible the outlook is usually a lot more mundane.
The typical site that’s doing gray-hat things like paying for ad placements or using questionable writers for their guest posts, they usually do as well as you might expect – they muddle along.
Broadly speaking, white-hat SEO strategies – both on-site and off-site, are the only way to go for long-term success.
History shows us over and over again in the form of thousands of successful websites that the key to success online is to improve one’s relevance – this is what search seeks and what they reward.
Good SEO is a self-reinforcing methodology, this is perhaps best explained by comparing various methods to one another.
Comparison
Black Hat, Gray Hat, White Hat – What?
To truly understand the differences between black-hat, gray-hat and white-hat backlinking, one needs to look at their differing core driving philosophies to make sense of the differences.
The difference between these three designations is as much about the ethics of those behind the practices as it is the practices themselves.
The reason this is important to keep in mind is because there is significant bleed-over between these practices.
Though we will highlight here some of the more stake and rigidly defined aspects, keep in mind that these vary and blend in a myriad of ways in the real-world.
What’s important for you to take away when referencing these practices is to get an idea of how they differ – and therefore what to avoid.
Black Hat Practise
Some explicitly black-hat link building tactics include:
Link-Farming: Large websites that host usually many, many backlinks which appear in an unnatural (spam like) manner.
Forum Spam Bots: As the name implies, these are automated bots which are programmed (often but not always) to register themselves on unprotected web forums and/or website comments sections and spam backlinks.
Awful Posts: Sometimes black-hat guest posts themselves are the product of automation gone too-far.
One method employed is to use email spam to generate accepting responses to a guest-posting offer (reciprocal) and then to send the respondents spam-bot-generated postings of very low-quality.
The above related directly to another bad-practice of Black-Hat SEO.
Spintax: Spintax is essentially the art and science of machine-assisted text-copying of text. Though falling short of the legal definition of plagiarism this practice is highly frowned upon by search and may incur severe penalties.
The primary manifestation of spintax out on the web is it’s use as a content-multiplier (write one original piece and use the spintax-bot to convert it into 50 bad ones) and copier.
Sometimes spintax is paired with bots to try to fool the credulous into various schemes, scams and other abusive often criminal behaviors.
All of these and many-many-more black-had tactics could be listed, the common thread amongst all of them is pure and simply the fact they flaunt both ethical considerations and Google’s best practices – not good.
Gray Hat Practices
Some more gray–hat link building tactics include:
Sketchy Backlinks (For Sale): Though not explicitly against Googles best-practices, there are backlinks for sale by many nefarious merchants looking to capitalize upon websites they own or control. These sites are usually but not always choc-ful of backlinks, which is itself highly suspect.
This practice is often considered gray-hat because it stands somewhere in between being explicitly forbidden and tolerated. Ultimately, what Google doesn’t know they can’t penalize – provided the backlinks appear natural!.
Expired Domains: One technique considered sketchy and definitely gray-hat is that of buying expired domains – domains with no owners but long track records and therefore ripe for exploitation.
What some SEO’s do as a part of link building is to buy and setup blogs on these domains, knowing they will get a boost way above baseline due to their history – smart, technically not against Google’s TOS, but definitely a gray area.
Bad Content: Okay, crummy content absolutely isn’t a scientific definition, but let’s face it, B-Roll footage exists in film and in SEO B-Roll writing does too.
Poor writing has many manifestations. It could be very verbose and long-winded blather, it could be low-cost and poorly researched or it might just be ill-conceived and amateurish.
In any event, low-quality content definitely is a form of gray-hat SEO – why?, well, it’s no unethical but it’s not very useful or relevant!
White Hat Practices
Link Sharing & Guest Blogging: First and foremost amongst White-Hat SEO practices is that of backlinking – why? It not only works, but is the quintessential form of ethical SEO.
With Link Sharing, websites which are the focus of SEO simply reach out to websites they want backlinks from and offer to write content for them in exchange for them – it’s that simple.
This method has been used by successful websites for over a generation and shows no signs of slowing down.
Content Planning: First and foremost amongst modern White-hat SEO strategies which relate to backlinking is content planning.
Content planning takes conventional research, trends analysis and content generation and blends it into one, unified effort to maximize the content production for a given websites rankings.
With content planning the end-goal is to achieve higher-quality, more voluminous and more focused and easy content production. The content produced is not just produced on a schedule and designed to tailor fit it’s audience, it’s also drip fed out over-time.
Some take content planning and fuse it’s tenets with those of website personalization and other forms of marketing to achieve truly stellar results.
Content that is high-quality and results from careful planning and production is much more likely to hit-the-mark, obtain many views and ultimately generate many backlinks.
User-Generated Content: One methodology of White-Hat SEO not often commented upon is that of fostering, gathering and utilizing user (and/or customer) generated content.
Today, more and more businesses are leveraging the power of video reviews, written reviews and other avenues which incentivize end-users (customers) to create content and to share it in exchange for discounts and other benefits.
This practice has many manifestations and is, in fact, only tangentially a form of SEO at all, however this practice is entirely ethical, highly impactful and something pursued by more and more businesses.
Blogging & Backlinking: One of the most quintessential White-Hat SEO tactics is that of blogging – both on-site and off-site (guest blogging) as a part of backlink generation.
It is a perfectly White-Hat SEO strategy to guest blog – and to host guest blogs as well – provided the content quality is high and was generated properly.
The White Hat Method
It should be clear to most readers that Black Hat and Gray Hat techniques are both risky and in the case of the former they may incur dire penalties – we don’t advise either.
At this point we’re going to take a detour and focus upon explaining White-Hat SEO and Backlinking in more depth.
Niche Content
Something essential to most types of specialized SEO generally is the development of very specific, highly specialized content.
This exotic content is often – but not always – highly niche specific in terms of the industry and verticalization of knowledge/topic, but this isn’t always the case.
Sometimes what makes content highly specific (niche) is the geography/location it applies to or other specificity of another sort entirely.
The point is, niche content really is associative only
A big part