In today’s modern world, search engines are now vital resources of information in our daily lives. These tools pull up results for search queries made by any individual. These results come in the form of sites which are webpages made by other individuals and companies. On a deeper level, the creators of these sites make income based on the traffic of their pages or the number of visits they acquire. The key to increasing this metric is to stay within the upper rankings of the search results. One method employed by web content creators is search engine optimization or SEO. This is why nowadays, hiring an SEO company in St. Louis MO could be helpful for your online business. Here, we discuss two of the most well-known techniques of SEO which are white hat and black hat.
In the black hat SEO technique, the content creator focuses on the search engine itself instead of establishing a target audience. Since traffic increases directly with site visits, this set of technique targets getting to the top of search results to get immediate views when users visit the site, regardless of content quality. The engine is studied thoroughly to know its rules to get ahead of similar websites in the search rankings.
The set of black hat SEO techniques disregards the quality of content and aims directly to stay ahead of search rankings. Examples of these techniques include keyword stuffing, hidden links and text, and content automation that spam related but useless results. Since the quality of content is disregarded, the user might obtain little to no utility in the site when they visit it. However, the creator still obtains traffic for these views and can monetize from it by getting a request for ad postings.
Due to the complete disregard of content in this set of techniques, black hat SEO has long been denounced by search engine companies such as Google and Bing. This is because the techniques are seen as ‘unethical’ due to their complete neglect of improving their content to help the users that view their sites and just want to generate income as fast as possible. This form of SEO is prohibited under the Webmaster Guidelines of these search engines and it can result in the site being banned and de-indexed by the engine itself.
On the other hand, white hat SEO targets an audience to generate views instead of focusing on the rankings of search engines. The site maintains its integrity while still making a good ranking in the search results. The tactics used in the white hat are approved by search engines and the entire webmaster community. Since Google is the biggest search engine currently, it is important for any site owner to maintain its listing with the engine. Being de-listed can result in a drastic drop in site traffic.
Examples of white hat SEO techniques include improving site content quality, the use of keyword Meta tags, and optimizing site navigation for easier access. The webmaster invests in generating a fan base that will trust the site and visit it often for being informative and useful in fulfilling their needs. In turn, this audience will grow over time and more people will visit the site. Since the site is optimized through keywords in headings, the site itself will maintain a good position when searched in the engine.
Since SEO is a powerful technique to make the difference in generating site traffic, it is important to differentiate between black hat and white hat tactics which can make or break one’s reputation and rankings in search engine results.