Pros and Cons of Black Hat Vs White Hat SEO

When you create a website, you want people to know it exists. You build your site and you furnish it with unique content. You’re definitely heading in the right direction, but these steps alone aren’t going to bring your site the traffic you desire. This is where SEO comes in.

SEO, or search engine optimisation, is the golden ticket to bringing your site tons of visitors. It uses techniques such as link building to improve your site’s ranking in the search engines, therefor increasing your site’s visibility and bringing in the traffic you want.

Once you make SEO your goal, you have a couple of options to consider: White Hat SEO and Black Hat SEO.

What is White Hat SEO ?

Search engines love White Hat SEO because it abides by their rules. Because of this, many people consider White Hat SEO the “honest” SEO practice. White Hat SEO employs techniques such as reciprocal linking, back linking, internal linking, creating unique content, and article marketing.

White Hat SEO 'Pros'

• You can have a high quality website with original content.
• Your site can achieve long term results.
• You don’t have to worry about your site being banned by the search engines and all your hard work going to waste.
• By targeting your keywords wisely and optimizing your site around them, your site can have a high conversion rate.

White Hat SEO 'Cons'

• You must update your content regularly in order to achieve and maintain a high ranking.
• It may take a long while before your site is ranked high in the search engines.

What is Black Hat SEO ?

Black Hat SEO breaks the rules. It does not follow the search engines’ guidelines and many people consider this SEO practice to be “unethical.” Black Hat SEO uses techniques such as keyword stuffing, doorway pages, invisible text, cloaking, link spamming, and purchasing expired domains.

Black Hat SEO 'Pros'

• Your site can receive a high ranking in a short amount of time.
• It takes less time than White Hat SEO to achieve a high ranking in the search engines.

Black Hat SEO 'Cons'

• Your site will most likely be penalised or banned by the search engines, maybe permanently.
• If your goal is to make money, you will likely have to create one website after another because your sites keep getting banned.
• You may earn a negative reputation among fellow marketers.
• Your site may have a low conversion rate because it’s not the type of site visitors are actually seeking.
• Keyword stuffing may annoy your site’s visitors and drive them away.

In your campaign for ranking high in the search engines you will need to utilise SEO. Sites that are optimised with White Hat SEO require hard work, but you can achieve long-lasting results. On the other end of the spectrum, sites optimised with Black Hat SEO can achieve great results fast, but will most likely have short life spans.

With these pros and cons in mind, you can choose the SEO method you believe will best fit your website’s needs.