White Hat SEO vs Black Hat SEO - Tutorial

In terms of SEO (Search Engine Optimization), the winner takes it all! Getting to number one of page one on Yahoo, Google, Bing, Dogpile, Alta Vista, Mweb, or any other search engine, means that you will get 60% of the hits. That translates into a lot of business. In frustration, some would use Black Hat SEO even though there is a danger of their site being wiped from rankings. So which is better? This is about White Hat SEO vs Black Hat SEO.

SERPS
Serps stands for Search Engine Results Page. It could just as easily stand for Search Engine Rank page. And it’s probably the most import thing in the life of anyone who is trying to make a living on the web. Unfortunately, as with virtually everything else these days, the winner takes it all. The first link on any web page is the link that gets clicked on. The first link gets clicked on somewhere between 45% and 60%. The second link gets clicked on somewhere between 10% and 15%. The third and forth links gets clicked on somewhere around 6%. The 5^th and 6^th links get clicked on about 4% of the time. And the remaining links on the page somewhere around 1 or 2%. And, yes, forget page two. Also forget the other 607 million websites that the browser said was available on the same topic.

So if being in number one position makes that much of a difference, is using Black Hat SEO techniques worth the risk? Read further about Black Hat SEO vs White Hat SEO.

White Hat SEO

The different search engine companies give rules on how to write copy so that the search engines will find the copy that is written. The criteria for getting to the top of the search engine includes a percentage of relevant keywords (the words that someone will insert into the search engine to find the copy), unique content, large sites with many pages, and a high degree of back linking. Ensuring that a site has all these attributes will increasingly push the site to page one of the search engine. White Hat SEO techniques mean using the methods that Google advocates you to use, e.g. writing a good summary, the appropriate percentage of keywords, finding appropriate backlinks, and hoping that other people backlink to the site. Alternatively, it could mean manually putting in relevant links into many different sites. Black Hat SEO means using software to get backlinks on many sites - whether they are bogus or real sites. In the balance between White Hat SEO vs Black Hat SEO, the question is always whether it's worth the effort of investing in Black Hat SEO techniques, if Google (and other search engines) immediately remove the site from the rankings completely.

Black Hat SEO

Black Hat says, “Yeah, we tried that. We found that all the rich and powerful companies were able to outspend us in getting it done by buying up all the great URLs and getting the better keywords through being able to pay for better research. So we’re stuck. We either use Black Hat SEO or we’re dead in the water.” Remember that in order to earn a living on the internet, you need at least 10,000 – 100,000 hits on your website per month. These people explain that by using White Hat SEO they might be guaranteed ten or twenty hits per day but that ten or twenty hits per day didn’t make for a viable living.

Black Hat techniques involve using software to create back links, spin articles so that writing only one article results in thousands of different articles (thereby giving search engine robots the impression that it’s an enormous site), spamdexing which means putting unrelated words into the meta tags, scrape sites means combining existing pages from different websites onto one enormous website, doorway pages which aren’t real pages but because of keyword stuffing and linkspamming get into the SERPs, and then redirect traffic to the real site. All these methods use software and can be done in minutes.

The Black Hat SEO Justification

Black Hat SEO webmasters claim that it’s not worth the years of work that it takes White Hat SEO to get to the top, only to find that Google changes its algorithms just as it gets there, and then they have to start from the beginning again. They claim that even if their site gets taken down within two weeks, it still takes them less then 30 minutes to put up a new site, and an hour or so to get back operational. In the two weeks that they’re operating, they earn thousands of dollars. They maintain they have to earn a living, and when the winner takes it all, there is nothing to do but play the only game that the losers get to play in order to get a slice of the pie. So, in the war between White Hat SEO vs Black Hat SEO, in this instance, these webmasters definitely back Black Hat SEO!

Black Hat Techniques SEO EBook

No, I have not read this ebook nor have I bought it. And I’m not marketing it either. If it was a print book, yes, I would buy it, but I can’t study stuff on line. I have to have it in black and white next to me. Still the site looks interesting and it’s nice to know what one is up against if one is doing White Hat SEO. The author of the site gives a lot of interesting information about Black Hat SEO and also defines the various terms. It's interesting to know because if you're using White Hat SEO, then this is what you're up against. To find out more about the argument between Black Hat SEO techniques vs White Hat SEO techniques, read the link opposite.

White Hat SEO

One of the most stunning findings is that not a single community college or university is teaching SEO (Search Engine Optimization) or SEM (Search Engine Marketing). It’s not rocket science. It’s very easy and well within the ability of anybody to understand and apply. So why then, are the few courses that are taught not only massively expensive but taught at graduate level? The answer is simple. The winner not only takes it all, but wants to keep it all. Nobody wants all the White Hat SEO techniques to be freely available to everybody because then we are playing on level playing fields and nobody has any advantage against the other, except the skill with which we apply what we know.

In other words, effective White Hat SEO is not available to the ordinary man in the street for two reasons. The first is that search engines like Google, Yahoo, Bing, and others, program their algorithms to give higher ranking to larger sites, thereby wiping out the small man. The second is that inexpensive courses that teach everybody SEO and SEM simply are not available to the rank and file of humanity. So does there come a time when in the choice involving Black Hat SEO vs White Hat SEO, that the wrong choice is made for the right reasons (the right reason being to earn a pay check)?

Solutions to ‘Winner Takes It All’ Search Ranking
I have, on several occasions, written to the ideas email at google and suggested that they have buttons to different search engine parameters. The one button would bring up the big boys. Another button would bring up local businesses in the area that one is looking for. A third button will bring up small independent online marketers. And so forth. To date, Google has ignored this suggestion. I think it has merit. I don’t know how many times you’ve looked for a local cobbler or a local fishmonger or something like that, only to find a thousand large online companies come up. I’m pretty sure that the local shoemaker and the local fish guy is there – only they’re number 970,000 in line. In the meantime, the war goes on between White Hat SEO vs Black Hat SEO.