Black Hat or White Hat SEO? Which do YOU practice?

In old western movies, it’s easy to tell the heroes from the villains simply by looking at the color of their hats. The good guys wore white, and the bad guys wore black.

In fact, the distinguishing hats became so iconic that “white hat” and “black hat” became idioms of the English language … idioms that we still use today in online marketing. Hence, “Black Hat SEO” and its moral opposite, “White Hat SEO.”

Webopedia has a good definition of Black Hat Search Engine Optimization (SEO):

“In search engine optimization (SEO) terminology, black hat SEO refers to the use of aggressive SEO strategies, techniques and tactics that focus only on search engines and not a human audience, and usually does not obey search engines guidelines.

Some examples of black hat SEO techniques include keyword stuffing, invisible text, doorway pages, adding unrelated keywords to the page content or page swapping (changing the webpage entirely after it has been ranked by search engines).”

Engaging in Black Hat SEO practices is essentially trying to “game the system,” and Google has gotten smart enough to catch and penalize these online marketing bad guys.

White Hat SEO, on the other hand, focuses on providing an excellent reader experience for the human audience while playing by the search engine rules.

In other words, we write for the human first, but we write in such a way as to let the search engine also know what the page is about … so that the search engine can do its job and help the human audience find the content they’re looking for.

We here at Exactly Write Online Marketing are strictly White Hat SEO practitioners.

We believe in

• Value First
• Building Relationships
• Ethics and Honor Above Fast Profits

We use keywords and keyword phrases in content strategically yet also naturally, with an appropriate keyword density rather than the keyword stuffing common to black hatters.

We craft titles and meta tags in accordance with search engine guidelines to assure the search engines that the website page is relevant to specific keywords a reader may be searching for.

We write for the human reader in such a way as to deliver such an excellent experience that they’ll come back for more and tell their friends. We strive to follow Walt Disney’s advice to …

“Whatever you do, do it well. Do it so well that when people see you do it they will want to come back and see you do it again and they will want to bring others to show them how well you do what you do.” ~Walt Disney

And we believe white hat practices aren’t limited to SEO, but should extend to all of your online marketing.

That means …

• No spammy email.
• No hyped-up salesy social media.
• No bait-and-switch in PPC (pay per click) ads.

It means being ethical and always keeping the reader — that human on the other side of the computer screen — top of mind.

If these values align with yours and you find yourself in need of help implementing White Hat SEO and other White Hat Online Marketing, we’d love to explore if we may be a good fit to provide that help. Contact us directly using the form below.

And if we’ve stimulated thoughts you’d like to share with other readers, please do so in the post comment section below the contact form!