White Hat VS Black Hat

Let’s face it: as long as there is a logical-sounding, convenient (useful) label floating around, it will get used and mis-used. That is the story of “Black Hat SEO” and “White Hat SEO”. They are poor quality labels, poorly-defined (in practice), yet so easily “understood” and so convenient that they persist… year after year.

Personally I believe that these labels are good for Google, and bad for SEO practitioners. I believe that by labeling SEO as “black” or “white”, Google gains an opportunity to influence the popular perception of SEO in it’s favor, where otherwise it would not have such an opportunity. Of course Google has used this to its advantage many times (such as the times it has cautioned web site owners not to trust SEOs, because they may employ Black Hat tactics…F.U.D.). As I have said before, there is only one color of SEO worthy of effort, and that’s Green SEO.
So while it is unfortunate that we have to accept these labels, we do have to accept them because our clients think they understand them. Therefore, it is also essential that we properly define them.

That’s really quite easy to do, especially when you start with the definition of “Black Hat” SEO:

Black Hat : techniques or tactics which have been defined by Google as in violation of the Google “Quality Guidelines” (see “Quality Guidelines, which outline some of the illicit practices that may lead to a site being removed entirely from the Google index”) . The Black Hat label applies to those methods specifically mentioned n the “Guidelines”, other methods and/or tactics or circumstances mentioned byMatt Cutts in his blog, in Matt’s comments on others’ blogs, or just about anywhere anyone from Google says anything that strongly suggests Google took action against a site for some specific reason. Black Hat SEOs know what they are doing is defined as BAD, and do it anyway for specific reasons (not usually including “get banned”). I like to think of Black Hat SEOs as opportunists. They see an opportunity to gain, and take it, managing the associated risk. Please don’t confuse ignorant SEOs with Black Hat SEOs… the ignorant ones are those who execute on Black Hat (evil) tactics without managing the risks (either out of ignorance or folly doesn’t matter to me here).

White Hat: techniques or tactics which can be defended as NOT being contrary to the spirit of Google’s expressed quality desires, by citing Google’s own published guidelines, Matt Cutts’ blog posts, or comments posted in other places, or just about any other Google communication. I like to refer to White Hat SEOs as “conservatives” of the SEO world… where things are viewed as BLACK or WHITE (GOOD or BAD), and the letter of the Google god is taken verbatim as TRUTH. Yes, there is a bit of a timeline problem with that approach (if Matt said it was bad in 2002, is it still bad?) but that’s just the tip of the White Hat iceburg.

Grey Hat (or Gray Hat): Since the color gray is between black and white, logically Grey Hat SEO sounds like a label for the middle ground. But it’s not. Because White is pure white and grey is a shade of black, we have confusion. Some say Grey Hat is NOT White Hat and is just a shade of Black Hat. So let’s step away from the coor wheel and define Grey Hat as the practice of tactics/techniques which remain ill-defined by all that published material coming out of Google, and for which reasonable people (not White Hat SEOs, mind you, but “reasonable people”) could disagree on how the tactics support or contrast with the “spirit” of Google’s published guidelines.