You’ve undoubtedly heard the word “SEO” in a dozen different settings. Perhaps a firm employee says, “We need to improve our SEO strategy,” or “We need to hire an SEO consultant.” You may have even heard the terms “good SEO” and “poor SEO” spoken.
But what exactly do people mean when they refer to SEO? Do they all have the same meaning in mind? As you’ll see in this piece, the term “SEO” is broad and now used to describe a variety of things.
To help you understand what marketers are saying at any particular time, we’ll describe the many sorts of SEO below.
But first, the basic explanation – what is SEO?
SEO stands for search engine optimization at its most fundamental level. The process of driving “free,” “natural,” or “organic” traffic to a search engine is referred to by this phrase.
A client can raise their online ranking naturally in countless ways. Some of the more prominent ways include:
Building a backlink profile, which measures the number of trustworthy, authoritative websites that point to your content.
Mobile optimization, which makes sure your pages load quickly and clearly on a phone or tablet.
Optimizing your website’s speed and performance to load as quickly as feasible
Site architecture: ensuring that pages are arranged in accordance with best practises
and countless additional strategies.
Because Google and other search engines never publish exactly how their search engine algorithms function, marketers are continuously experimenting with how to get their websites rank higher. That is how SEO works.
Now that the fundamental meaning of SEO has been clarified, what about the many types? Let’s first divide SEO into two categories: by stage and by philosophy.
SEO for on-page
On-Page SEO describes strategies that improve a page that is meant to be a component of a website. These include the following initiatives, but are not limited to them:
- keyword analysis
- Internal tying-up
- Meta-descriptions
- Alt-tags
- Headers
- URL formatting
SEO for off-page
- Off-Page SEO, in contrast, focuses entirely on the activities carried out after a page is published, such as:
- Page evaluations
- sharing on social media
- Using social bookmarks
- Backlinks
Consider these two SEO strategies as two distinct phases: on-page (on-page SEO) during page building, and off-page (off-page SEO) (Off-Page).
White Hat, Black Hat, and Gray Hat are the Three SEO Philosophies.
The white hat, black hat, and grey hat colours are used to distinguish the three SEO “philosophies” that make up the second bucket. They only represent various approaches to the same objective.
White Hat SEO
White hat refers to safe, compliant practises aimed at enhancing a brand’s search engine ranking. Under Google’s (and other search engines’) policies, all strategies employed in White Hat SEO are acceptable.
White hat SEO strategies comprise:
- White hat involves:
- Publishing relevant, top-notch material (such as blog posts, articles, e-books, infographics, and guides). Nothing is worth worrying about if you are blank about creating infographics, search for the best infographic templates, edit them as per requirements, and you’re done!
- optimizing a page (H2 headers, alt-tags, meta-descriptions)
- Backlinks from actual, trustworthy websites
While White Hat SEO strategies may take several months to create results, the impacts are significantly more impactful and long-lasting than Black Hat SEO.
Black Hat SEO
Black Hat SEO is the complete opposite of White Hat SEO in that it uses unethical SEO techniques. Black Hat SEO relies around exploiting flaws in a search engine. It’s the least ethical way to carry out SEO.
Black Hat SEO techniques comprise:
- Secret texts and links
- Link wheels, link farms, and link networks
- buying links
- Stuffing keywords
- mentioning rivals
- spammy, fraudulent, or duplicate content
- Black Hat SEO can be quick to deploy and get plenty of initial traffic, but the danger simply isn’t worth it. If Google ever discovers you utilising any of these strategies, you could get blacklisted. Every time a user accesses your pages after that, Google will show a warning page.
Gray Hat SEO
Gray Hat SEO combines Black Hat and White Hat SEO, as the name suggests. To get the outcomes they guarantee, some businesses or marketers may mix strategies. The use of Black Hat SEO techniques, however, is strongly discouraged and is not made any more acceptable in Google’s eyes by this hybrid strategy.
Choosing the Appropriate Strategy
Different marketers and agencies may give their own opinion on what you should do, but many will agree that White Hat SEO is generally the superior strategy over Black Hat SEO.
White Hat SEO may take more time and effort, but the outcomes are more powerful and long-lasting. Never put the entire domain at danger just to get some brief traffic. At least in SEO, going slowly and steadily is always a more solid strategy.
Gray Hat or Black Hat SEO are never used at Digital Cornerstone. We think that SEO must follow accepted procedures and industry norms. Black Hat SEO has too often resulted in websites being banned, forcing firms to rebrand or go out of business.
Want to learn how transformational a White Hat SEO approach can be to your business? Contact Digital Cornerstone right away to start growing your company the proper way.