Content Marketing Strategy: ​​What Is White Hat and Black Hat SEO?

At Lightning Media Partners, we know that following SEO best practices will turn out top-notch results in the content we create. After all, content marketing and SEO are a match made in a search engine’s algorithmic heaven. However, following these SEO practices requires diligence and time — sometimes taking months or even years for fruitful results. This is where some companies want to skirt corners and try their hands at black hat SEO.

Black hat SEO can tempt new businesses starting out, or overwhelmed marketing teams attempting to grow and scale content creation, with the promise of quick work and easy wins. However, black hat SEO techniques will result in punishment from search engines sooner or later.

In this article, we’ll break down:

• • What is white hat and black hat SEO?
  • How to avoid black hat SEO in content marketing. 
  • Tips to practice white hat SEO in content marketing.

What is white hat and black hat SEO? 

White hat SEO is when marketers use techniques permissible by search engines to rank higher in a search engine’s algorithm. Black hat SEO is when marketers attempt to rank higher on search engines by using SEO techniques that infringe upon search engines’ general terms of service.

Related article: What is SEO and Why Does it Matter?

White hat SEO

White hat SEO describes the use of SEO best practices to rank higher in SERPs that abide by search engines’ guidelines. Google, the search engine with the largest market share, publishes webmaster guidelines to facilitate white hat SEO practice. While it may take more time and effort to rank higher for keywords, using white hat SEO is the only way to avoid penalties and build positive rapport with search engines and users. 

Examples of white hat SEO practices include:

• • Providing your audience with high-quality, valuable content.
  • Adding relevant keywords to meta titles and descriptions.
  • Participating in link building and using backlinks.
  • Conducting optimal keyword research.

Black hat SEO

Black hat SEO describes using SEO techniques that go against search engines. Black hat SEO’s origins stem from old Western films where the “bad guys” would wear black cowboy hats and the “good guys” would wear white hats. Today, “black hat” techniques often refer to developers, marketers, or information technicians who perform unethical actions.

While many people in the digital marketing space steer away from black hat SEO and practice ethical techniques, some companies dip into black hat SEO’s bag of tricks from time to time in search of a quick win or shortcut to their goals. Examples of black hat SEO techniques include keyword stuffing, buying backlinks, cloaking, creating duplicate content, and falsely reporting competitors. 

Gray hat SEO

Gray hat SEO is the practice of using techniques that lie between search-engine-approved practices and unethical abiding by search engine standards and ignoring them. For example, using expired domains, creating private blog networks, and spinning content aren’t purely unethical black hat tactics, but they are shady. It’s best to steer clear of gray hat SEO because they can easily incur penalties if you are caught, and new algorithm updates may specifically target such practices. 

The impact of black hat SEO on search engine rankings

Black hat SEO techniques may seem tempting for those seeking quick results and shortcuts to improve their search engine rankings. However, the consequences of engaging in these unethical practices can be severe and long-lasting.

One of the primary consequences of implementing black hat SEO techniques is the risk of incurring penalties from search engines. When search engines discover that a website is engaging in black hat practices, they often impose penalties, ranging from a decrease in rankings to complete removal from search engine results pages (SERPs). These penalties can have a devastating impact on a website’s visibility and organic traffic, resulting in a significant loss of potential customers and revenue.

Black hat SEO techniques can also tarnish a website’s reputation and brand image. When users encounter low-quality content, keyword stuffing, or misleading information, it undermines their trust in the website and the associated brand. Negative user experiences can lead to increased bounce rates, reduced engagement, and a decline in repeat visitors. Consequently, this can further harm a website’s rankings as search engines prioritize user satisfaction and engagement metrics.

Additionally, black hat SEO techniques can result in the accumulation of low-quality backlinks, which can be detrimental to a website’s link profile. Search engines value high-quality, authoritative backlinks as a signal of a website’s credibility and relevance. However, black hat tactics such as buying backlinks or participating in link schemes generate unnatural and spammy links that are easily identified by search engines. As a result, these manipulative practices can trigger algorithmic penalties or manual actions that devalue a website’s backlink profile, making it harder to achieve and maintain high rankings.

Black hat SEO techniques undermine the integrity and fairness of the search engine ecosystem. Search engines strive to deliver the most relevant and valuable results to users based on their search queries. By artificially manipulating rankings, black hat practitioners distort the natural order of search results, making it difficult for legitimate businesses that abide by ethical SEO practices to compete. This harms the overall user experience and erodes trust in search engines.

Businesses should prioritize white hat SEO strategies that focus on creating high-quality content, providing a positive user experience, and building genuine, authoritative backlinks. By adhering to search engine guidelines and ethical SEO practices, websites can establish a solid foundation for sustainable organic growth and long-term success.

How to avoid black hat SEO in content marketing 

With the knowledge of what black hat SEO is (and isn’t), here are a few ways to avoid unintentionally engaging in black hat SEO in content marketing.

Using private link networks and farms

Private link networks and link farms exist solely to generate a high number of backlinks for a designated domain. Unlike backlinks gained organically, these links are often paid for by companies looking to rapidly grow the size of their backlink profile. However, links acquired through link farms provide little to no value to the user and typically get penalized by search engines like Google — so unless you want to spend your brand credibility to buy the farm, it’s best to steer clear of this spammy link-building tactic. 

The best way to avoid search engine penalties for this black hat SEO tactic? Have your SEO team or service provider vet backlink opportunities carefully and exercise caution when requesting inbound links. You should also conduct regular audits of your backlink profile and disavow any toxic links that could incur penalties.

Cloaking and keyword stuffing

Cloaking and keyword stuffing attempt to trick search engines into believing that a URL provides valuable content while delivering a suboptimal user experience. Cloaking works by presenting two distinct views of a website: a keyword-rich page designed to appease search engines and a thin or clunky public-facing page that rarely meets user expectations. Keyword stuffing can also create an undesirable user experience, injecting instances of a target keyword so frequently on a page that it makes it difficult — if not impossible — to read and comprehend. 

These black hat SEO tactics often work in tandem. For example, a website might inject hundreds of instances of a keyword onto a page, then cloak the words by matching the foreground and background colors, effectively hiding the text. 

When crafting content for your brand, prioritize creating a desirable user experience above all else. While it might be tempting to take shortcuts by cloaking and keyword stuffing, remember that useful and authentic content will win over both your audience and Google’s crawlers in the long run.

Abusing rich snippets

Rich snippets, sometimes called schema markup or structured data, give search engines structural information about your content that informs how it appears on search engine results pages (SERPs). Rich snippets include bonus information about a search result, such as the time needed to make a recipe or the release date of a band’s album. Because rich snippets stand out visually, they may yield better click-through rates (CTRs).

However, rich snippets can also be abused by black hat marketers attempting to game the system. By adding schema markup with inaccurate information — such as how many positive reviews their product received — these tricksters can manipulate search engines to make their content stand out. 

If you’re in pursuit of a coveted rich snippet, avoid spamming your website’s backend with inaccurate markup. Instead, when designing a content strategy, include a mix of content formats that can organically take advantage of rich snippet features, such as recipes, events, blog posts, and product pages.

Buying and selling links

If you have a little wiggle room in your marketing budget, it may be tempting to expedite the growth of your backlink profile by paying for links. While paying another website to link back to your domain might seem like an easy way to boost your domain authority, search engines like Google expressly prohibit the practice in their Webmaster Guidelines. 

Websites detected buying and selling links incur penalties from these search engines, meaning both your budget and your credibility will take a hit. Instead of risking your reputation by paying for links, focus on creating valuable content that inspires other brands to link to your website organically.

Related article: SEO Tips for Digital Publishing Companies

Considerations when choosing a content marketing agency

Because black hat SEO techniques rely on taking shortcuts throughout the content creation process, they often yield poor quality content that has little or no value for your audience. But low-quality and duplicate content doesn’t just harm your brand reputation — it can also cause your SERP rankings to take a sizeable hit that takes years to build up again if search engines catch on to your underhanded tactics. 

The best way to avoid incurring these penalties? Learn to recognize the signs of these sketchy SEO shortcuts, and take time to ensure that your content team follows best practices. If you’re outsourcing your content creation, conduct thorough research before choosing a content marketing agency to partner with. While many agencies are dependable, some rely on shady practices to generate quick wins for their clients. These companies may use questionable methods, such as subcontracting to a content farm, in order to increase their own bottom line. 

While not all content farms or mills employ black hat tactics, it’s important to keep these practices in mind when choosing a new content creation partner. Remember to always review content produced by someone outside of your internal team, and look out for red flags such as promises of results that sound too good to be true. A reputable content marketing agency will be transparent about its content creation process and the results you can realistically expect to see.