The 4 Different Types of SEO Practices
There are 4 different types of SEO (search engine optimization) practices; all geared towards helping marketers earn higher visibility in the search results. Following is an overview of each of the practices.
- White Hat SEO
The white hat SEO strategy adheres to Google Webmaster Guidelines. This SEO practice typically costs more and takes longer to see results. The good news is that white hat SEO is a low risk practice that tends to offer lasting and added value with time. Creating useful, relevant content that helps your audience accomplish whatever it is they want to do is a good example of White Hat SEO. Also included are practices like promoting your content on social media platforms to earn links and exposure, having a fast loading, mobile friendly website and using keyword rich, descriptive meta tags.
- Black Hat SEO
While the white hat SEO designation signifies “good” SEO tactics, black hat SEO is the exact opposite. Black hat SEO may get you faster results, but they go against Google Webmaster Guidelines. This means that they come with the risk of getting your content or website banned from the search results altogether. At the very least you could end up demoted during one of Google’s ranking algorithms. Bottom line, you may end up gaining traction in search results, but there’s a high risk that the value won’t be sustained. Plagiarism, keyword hiding or stuffing, paid backlinks, etc., are examples of black hat SEO.
- Grey Hat SEO
This SEO practice falls somewhere in the middle and its tactics aren’t specifically referred to in Google’s guidelines. You’ll still want to proceed with caution if you take this approach to SEO because as mentioned above, trying to bypass Google’s rules can get you in trouble and negatively interfere with your rankings. An example of grey hat SEO includes a practice call “clickbait” in which the content’s primary purpose is to attract attention and motivate visitors to click on a link that’s content doesn’t deliver. Other grey hat SEO examples include excessive link exchanges, spun (altered) content, paying for reviews and excessive link exchanges.
- Negative SEO
This is the practice of applying black hat or grey hat SEO tactics on somebody else’s website with the objective of causing harm. The main reason some marketers use the negative SEO tactic is to harm competitors, in order to move up the search engine results themselves. These practices are centered on building undesirable and/or unnatural links to a competitor’s site, hacking the site to modify content, posting negative reviews, etc.
Online marketers who focus on using the basic principles of SEO (white Hat) will provide a far better user experience and consequently earn a higher, longer lasting ranking than those who try to look for loopholes to take advantage of. If you’re looking for a CT SEO service provider, pay attention when they describe their services to you. If they recommend black, grey, or negative SEO tactics, it would be worth your while to continue your search.
