Reviewing Black Hat , White Hat and Grey Hat SEO

08 September 2008 - By Ahson Rafiq - Filled in SEO

I thought this would make a somewhat interesting post, some of you might already know this but I want to go over the three main kinds of SEO anyway, you just might learn something you didn’t know before.

Now, SEO is really good and profitable and all that, but if you don’t know what you’re doing is right or wrong, you would definitely get burned in google, I’ve been messing around with SEO since 2006, and after almost 3 years of trial & error, I know what to do and not to do. So here we go..

Black Hat SEO

This is really really bad, unless you know what you’re doing, don’t do it.

  1. Copying content.
  2. Cloaking
  3. Faking pr by using redirections
  4. Abusing APIs for more content or traffic.
  5. Auto blogs with a few hacks, kinda like dup-content
  6. Link spamming
  7. Irrelevant outgoing links.
  8. Mass link spamming, some over the top stuff.
  9. Changing author links on wordpress themes and spreading them.

Grey Hat SEO

Well, theres a 50/50 chance..this isn’t good or bad, its up to your ethics..Still there’s a good chance you’ll get burned doing this.

  1. Spamming
  2. Email spam
  3. Using programs to manipulate google serps (auto clickers)
  4. Using social bookmarks way too much to spam
  5. Way too many directory links
  6. Buying irrelevant links on purpose
  7. Over-doing social bookmarks.
  8. MFA (Made for adsense sites)
  9. Hacked sitemaps, to include links to other sites then your own.

White Hat SEO

This is where the money is (for me, atleast).

  1. Good content
  2. Natural backlinks
  3. Organic SERPs
  4. NO irrelevant links
  5. NO directory spamming
  6. Respectable, Authoritative and relevant outgoing links
  7. NO offtopic content
  8. Useful resources along with content
  9. Regular sitemap, submitted once or twice a month to the webmaster central at google
  10. NO over selling links
  11. NO irrelevant links within content

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10 Responses to “Reviewing Black Hat , White Hat and Grey Hat SEO”

  1. Otooo Says:

    I’m gonna disagrre with u on one of the grey-hat techniques
    How are MFA sites grey-hat – sure, they are designed to get clicks but they are doing nothing wrong – all good content is there

  2. Nicole Price Says:

    I will go the white hat all the way.

  3. JustinB Says:

    Yea whitehat all the way. It does get dissapointing to see black/grey hat seo doing better sometimes

  4. Meka Says:

    I didnt know the difference until you explained it all. Great post. I like white hat seo personally.

  5. Shannon Lilly Says:

    Thanks for the great post bud!

  6. Games Says:

    White hat is the right thing to do but grey hat sounds tasty :P

  7. UK Insurance News Says:

    I think I’d have to agree with the Otooo regarding MFA sites being grey hat.

    For example, I have no problem using the allowed 3 sets of Adsense ads on a site but some sites have three 336 x 280 ad units one on top of the other so you have to scroll way down to see any content.

    In that case yes, this is arguably grey hat

  8. Dilson Decano Says:

    i dont know how to use blackhat method, i am wearing whitehat in seo. what about Pink Hat SEO?? I really heard about that.

  9. Review Bluehost Says:

    After years of experience with SEO, I found out that it’s better not to group SEO jobs in to hat’s color, but rather grouping up the SEO trick that works. People often get confused that White Hat’s good and Black is bad – which I think it’s very wrong. When you’re doing white doesn’t mean you’re the good guy; but more often, you are the pity guy that couldn’t get enough traffic to survive your site.

    That’s the cruel reality that I see.

    Nonetheless, this is an informative post! Thanks~

  10. Kelly @ Backlinkage Says:

    Although the names might imply otherwise, I think each person has to make their own choices concerning how far to take their promotion tactics.

    I, for example, would never consider using adware to promote a site. On the other hand, if I find a blog with “follow” comments, I’ll do my best to try to post a relevant comment. Is that link spamming? Some might say so – especially if the blog has nothing to do with the content of my site. Again, I’ve made my own choices and I can sleep at night.

    Good food for thought, regardless.

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