Hello and welcome to SEO is not that hard. I'm your host, ed Dawson, the founder of keywordspeopleusecom, the solution to finding the questions people ask online. In today's episode, I'm going to cover white hat to black hat and everything in between. Any newcomer to SEO will, before too long, start come across people talking about different techniques in terms of hat colours mainly white hat or black hat. This, for those unfamiliar with the terms, is likely to be baffling. So let's dig into where this idea of hat colours comes from and what it means in terms of SEO.
Speaker 1:The term black hat originated in the computer hacker community, not the SEO community. It was coined to describe hackers who violate laws or ethical standards for various purposes, for example, cybercrime, cyber warfare and other malicious reasons. In contrast, a white hat hacker is someone who only tries to find flaws in computer systems with the systems owners permission, and will only exploit them with permission, and they don't reveal the existence of any flaws until they've been fixed. The idea of using black hat and white hat as terms stems from 1950s western films, in which the bad guys wore black hats and the good guys white hats or other light coloured hats. So in the computer hacker community, black hat hackers are the people who look to find and exploit loopholes in computer systems without regard for the legalities of doing so, whereas white hats are the people who look to find and help loopholes get fixed without exploiting them. Ok, so that's where the terms originated, but it's not SEO. Right.
Speaker 1:At some point in the 1990s, when search engines entered the scene, so did people looking to improve their website rankings, and so SEO was born. This is where black hat SEO and white hat SEO was born at the same time. The dividing line here was less about legal and illegal methods though some things can be illegal, I'll cover that later but more about whether you're abided by the terms of service that the search engines set for sites they would or wouldn't include in their indexes. If you only ever do things that follow the rules, you are considered a white hat SEO. If you're happy to do things that are against the rules set out by search engines, then you are a black hat SEO. It's as simple as that, or is it as simple as that? I don't think it actually is, really.
Speaker 1:Let's look at the first part of this, which is the terms of service. We'll consider this really in terms of Google. Most of the search engines have similar ideas and concepts, but it's really Google's what we're looking at. So the terms of service and that is what Google talks about Now. These terms of service are not the law. This is the big differentiation between computer hacking and black hat in that sense and black hat in terms of SEO.
Speaker 1:Black hats, if they violate Google's terms of service, aren't actually breaking any laws, so that's not illegal behavior. So for those people who think that it's immoral because people are breaking the law when they're doing black hat SEO, that in most cases is not true. So it's a choice people make, but I wouldn't say that it's necessarily immoral. It's just a choice that someone is making, but whether they're going to follow those terms of service the letter or not, and if you actually read the terms of service in detail, there's so much leeway in there for Google to potentially penalize almost any behavior of anyone who's trying to improve their search engine rankings that pretty much even those people who consider themselves white hat are likely to be able to be penalized, because even just creating content for the benefit of search engines is really against the terms of service, and I don't know any SEO that has never created some content really just for the search engines to get people in. So let's just be clear on this the terms of service or not, and breaking the law to break those. And so therefore, it's not really a moral thing, it's not an illegal activity to be black hat. So for anyone who considers themselves black hat out there, I've got nothing against you doing it. I will be a liar if I said I'd never experiment with black hat stuff.
Speaker 1:For me, the distinction between white hat and black hat SEO is the longevity of any project that you're working on. So let's think about it. If you are fully white hat and you don't do anything to break the terms of service, it means that Google won't ever penalize you as long as you follow their rules, or any work that you do do should be long lasting by that marker, whereas if you're doing black hat SEO, then you're accepting the risk that the techniques you're using might be picked up by Google and your site may be banned, penalized, downgraded. Whatever You're accepting, there's a risk in a technique you're using. So then the difference between white hat and black hat is really a risk to reward ratio that you've got to look at and that's fine if you understand all the techniques that you're using and whether they're white or black hat.
Speaker 1:And that's where the tricky thing comes in, where you involve other people and other services as to whether the services that you're subscribing to or the techniques that you're following, based on people's recommendations, how closely they match the terms of service. So, for example, link building is something that people do and there are plenty of companies out there that offer link building services. Now, if you read the terms of service at Google, that is against their terms of service to do link building, especially paying for links. So if you pay someone to link to your website from their website and you'll use a broker to do the same for you, then that is technically that's black hat, and if you get caught out doing it, then you can get penalized and Google will do manual actions, that's, manual penalties, where they'll specifically discover your site is doing that and an actual person will put a marker against your site and downgrade it in the run Kings, maybe even ban it. They'll also do it algorithmically, where they have algorithmic models that automatically detect paid links and if they find them, then they will penalize those links, maybe penalize your site, they'll penalize the seller of the link and the buyer of the link and that is the end of theOnlinevascom. Okay, it's really difficult for them to get all of them, and I'm not saying that link building by buying links doesn't work in some cases and quite often it does, but it's a case of how long will it work for, and that's the same with any black hat technique. It's how long will it work for People who are dedicated black hats and accept that risk entirely.
Speaker 1:They work on a churn and burn model where they will just create a site and use black hat techniques to rank it as quickly and as fast as possible, run it for as long as they possibly can and then, when it gets caught out and burned, they just ditch it and start again and they accept that as part of their method and that's fine. As far as I'm concerned, that's absolutely fine. White hats on the other side they don't want to do that, so they don't do things that violate the terms of service knowingly, although some might do if they go along, but knowingly they'll try and avoid them all. So you have to decide where you wanna sit, and this is where the third hat comes in, the gray hat. Now, this is where probably most people actually are, whether they know it or not, even the black hats will still use white hat techniques where they work. They still might create great content that Google wants you to create as part of what they're doing, just alongside their black hat techniques. So, really, everyone is probably really a different shade of gray. So the more white hat you are, the lighter the shade of gray you'll be, and the more you go to the black hat side, so the darker gray your hat will be. So you just need to be sure what you're doing, where it sits on that scale and how much risk you're willing to take, and that's why you must always familiarize yourself with Google's terms of service so you can make those decisions on how much risk you're willing to take with any one technique you do or do not try.
Speaker 1:Okay, so far I've said that in the main, black hat is not illegal and in the main it isn't, but I just want to cover the areas where it can be illegal, and the main technique that some black hats use that is illegal is hacking websites to insert links in them. So this is where they get all the websites to link to them. By not paying the person or any other method. They literally just hack the website and insert their link. There's ways of doing this, hacking popular plugins on WordPress, for example. That's happened in the past where certain plugins have been compromised or WordPress itself has been compromised and hackers have managed to gain access to them and then insert links to other websites on them without the owner's knowledge or consent. Now, that is clearly illegal behavior and that's not something I would ever suggest people get involved with or look to do, because the repercussions are you are breaking the law. You can go to jail for this. So any technique that's clearly illegal, like that yet just don't get involved with, and that really is. There's a line there that I would not suggest anyone crosses.
Speaker 1:Now I will, in the future episodes, discuss various black hat techniques, just so that you can be informed of how they work, because to understand black hat is not actually bad, even if you decide not to use it. It's good to have an understanding so that you can be sure that, a you don't cross a line that you don't want to. Or, b if you do cross a line, you know where that line is, and it's also a great way of understanding actually how search engines work. If you don't understand black hat, you don't really have a full understanding of how the search engines work, because without knowing where the boundaries are and where the boundaries are crossed, then you don't really understand what's going on. So I think it's valid for people to learn black hat and it's valid for people to make decisions on where they go with it.
Speaker 1:Personally, as I say, I no longer do any black hat because I have sites that I've got to a point using white hat techniques that now rank well, make good incomes, and I don't want to jeopardize that. For me, the reward of black hat is the risk of it, just the reward isn't there. The risk is too much for there to be any reward, whereas for other people please risk-reward ratio so differently or maybe at different points in their journey, may want to look at it. But again, I would only suggest people look at it with their eyes totally open, totally understanding what's going on, which means research, knowledge and just upskining yourself to make sure you know where any technique stands against those terms of service. So, in summary, white hat that's where you only follow the rules, the terms of service. Black hat that is where you deliberately break the terms of service in the hope of a greater, quicker reward.
Speaker 1:Gray hat. That's where you're in between, and the shade of gray depends on how close you are to white or black. Closer to white, you'll be light gray. Closer to black, you'll be dark gray. But with all these things, to be forewarned is forearmed. You need to learn the terms of service. You need to learn the techniques and know where each technique sits against those terms of services. Thanks for listening. I really appreciate it. Please subscribe, share. It really helps. Seo is not that hard. It's brought to you by keywordspeopleusecom, the solution to finding the questions people ask online. See why thousands of people use us every day. Try it today for free at keywordspeopleusecom. If you want to get in touch or have any questions, I'd love to hear from you. I'm at channel five on Twitter. You can email me at podcast at keywordspeopleusecom. Bye for now and see you in the next episode of SEO is not that hard.