Black hat seo and white hat seo

[Carribeanking]

Hi,
I am quite aware of SEO, but not an expert.I had a query, what is the difference between white hat seo and black hat seo? If possible explain with advantages and disadvantages.I am awaiting for your valuable replies.

[Linda Buquet]

Hi Carribeanking,

Welcome to 5 Star.

Well my very simplified answer is this...
If it's listed as OK here: Google Webmaster Guidelines then it's white hat. If it's against Google's rules or does something to trick or try to fool end users then it's Black hat. There are some shades of gray in between too because it's not all black and white.

[marketraise001]

Well white hat SEO is all about implementing the basic SEO techniques and waiting for results.SEO is tough as the results may take months to show up in terms of PR and SERP'S.Actually it all depends when Google crawl.People who are impatient are always on the move to try out some back door strategies that are against internet rules.Like hacking,using proxy settings etc etc.

For more info about Black Hat SEO I am providing a wiki article.

"The dark side of SEO known as Blackhat “BH "derives from the white hat and black hat label from the early hacker days. Because most people nowadays see hackers as someone who is evil and malicious, but really a hacker was just someone trying to learn more about computers, and gain more insight into it. Obviously once malicious hacking took place, it gave the term, “hacker” a really bad rep, so the good guys labeled the bad guys as black hatters, and themselves as white hatters.
Now, it’s a pretty well known fact that, this isn’t like Star Wars where if you drift over to the dark side, you can never come back to the good side. It doesn’t work like that, even though most people think so.I am a firm believer that to be absolutely amazing in the entire art of SEO (because it truly is an art to master) you must know both sides, white and black. For people that swear by only knowing white hat seo and never meddling in black hat, they are either lying, because everyone gets curious sometime (and let’s not forget, some tactics labeled BH now at some point was considered legal and WH years ago) or they are selling themselves short by not learning as much as they can about SEO".

[jumar112]

Both of the answers are very good and I believe right on target.
Most people that use the black hat tricks are always having to keep ahead of Google or any search engine.
I personally would like to do it right the first time and not have to keep with trying to start over once the search engines "find" the black hat tricks.
Linda, you are so right as there are many grey areas to the black vs. white hat.

[Arun Lakhera]

Linda has told thousands words about black hat and white hat SEO by providing a link. According to me it is a matter of obeying internet laws or repelling them to achieve your ends. You wear a white hat if you obey the rules. Black hat is reserved for those SEOs, who work against the rules to get high ranking.

[jcorkern]

This is a very tough subject. My take is to do it right and build your business, and this is white hat. Building online is just like a brick and mortar business, it does not happen overnight. Now, when you get it built, you have a lasting business with a good foundation that will stand the test of time. And this is what white hat is all about. Like marketraise stated. you may take a few months to see results, but they will stick when you get there.

Black hat is really an art form, but not one i would practise. you can get almost instant traffic and you may even make good money for a few months, but then you will get caught, then you have to start the process over again, so, you have a 2 week to 6 week dead time getting started again. and the cycle goes on and on...

This is my point, if you sacrafice the first few months to do it right, you then have a growing business, if you choose blackhat, you have a 1 month to 6 week break every few months, lets say you have to start over 4 times in a year because of black hat at 6 weeks each. that is 24 weeks you are losing traffic doing black hat, you can get white hat rankings in 3 months and it never ends as long as you continue working. So, who is the smarter business?

Do not go on a football field with a baseball bat and you never have to worry about getting thrown out.

Hope this helps.