SEO techniques are classified by some into two broad categories: techniques that search engines recommend as part of good design, and those techniques that search engines do not approve of and attempt to minimize the effect of, referred to as spamdexing. Professional SEO consultants do not offer spamming and spamdexing techniques amongst the services that they provide to clients. Some industry commentators classify these methods, and the practitioners who utilize them, as either "white hat SEO", or "black hat SEO".[20] Many SEO consultants reject the black and white hat dichotomy as a convenient but unfortunate and misleading over-simplification that makes the industry look bad as a whole.
"White hat"
An SEO tactic, technique or method is considered "White hat" if it conforms to the search engines' guidelines and/or involves no deception. As the search engine guidelines are not written as a series of rules or commandments, this is an important distinction to note. White Hat SEO is not just about following guidelines, but is about ensuring that the content a search engine indexes and subsequently ranks is the same content a user will see.
White Hat advice is generally summed up as creating content for users, not for search engines, and then make that content easily accessible to their spiders, rather than game the system. White hat SEO is in many ways similar to web development that promotes accessibility although the two are not identical.
Spamdexing / "Black hat"
"Black hat" SEO are methods to try to improve rankings that are disapproved of by the search engines and/or involve deception. This can range from text that is "hidden", either as text colored similar to the background or in an invisible or left of visible div, or by redirecting users from a page that is built for search engines to one that is more human friendly. A method that sends a user to a page that was different from the page the search engined ranked is Black hat as a rule. One well known example is Cloaking, the practice of serving one version of a page to search engine spiders/bots and another version to human visitors.
Search engines may penalize sites they discover using black hat methods, either by reducing their rankings or eliminating their listings from their databases altogether. Such penalties can be applied either automatically by the search engines' algorithms or by a manual review of a site.
Results from Black Hat and White Hat SEO Techniques
Black hat SEO techniques may quickly deliver results. However, due to the disposable nature of the domains, the results are often short term - although they can be long term.
White hat SEO techniques can take some time to implement (although not necessarily) but their results tend to last for a long time (although, again, not necessarily).
It's true to say, then, that both black hat techniques and white hat techniques can generate both short term and long term results for clients, whether results are measured in terms of rankings, traffic, conversion or profit. However, do the ends always justify the means? I don't think so. I believe that by continuing to condone black hat techniques the SEO industry is setting itself up for failure and sleepwalking into oblivion. The following two articles, Ethical Search Engine Optimization Explained and Search Engine Optimization and The Law, will expand upon this belief.
What Is Blue Hat SEO?
At the moment, BlueHatSEO.com is the only website on the Internet that is completely dedicated to the art of Advanced SEO. Blue Hat SEO is essentially the study of advanced Internet marketing and search engine optimization techniques. Blue Hat SEO covers the advanced knowledge of both Black Hat and White Hat SEO. Everything on BlueHatSEO.com will assume that the audience knows and understands the basics of SEO and Internet marketing. If it helps, think of BlueHatSEO as the creative aspect of SEO.
Blue Hatters use their knowledge of the search engines and other marketing practices to twist and manipulate them in a creative and original way to best benefit their sites.
The concept of Blue Hat SEO rose out frustration in the lack of advanced SEO knowledge made available to webmasters. The motive behind this site is to inspire other webmasters to copy and mimic it in hopes of creating more resources for the advanced search engine marketer. We want to create a venue where knowledgable webmasters can share and present their ideas and techniques. This, in hope, will lead to other sites dedicated to the art of advanced SEO tactics. Until this goal is reached enjoy the content!
