Black hat SEO uses the darker (hence the name) techniques mainly aimed at deceiving the search engines such as Google, Yahoo and Bing whereas white hat SEO of course uses the opposite. White hat SEO uses methods that are recommended by the search engines.

Is Black Hat For Everyone?

So why doesn’t everyone just adopt white hat methods? Well some believe that using these techniques alone won’t fully get the most out of optimising a website so they turn to black hat tricks to try and accelerate results in the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages).

There are many different black hat techniques optimisers are using but in my own experience using white hat techniques are the safest option. Black hat techniques tend to give quicker results than their white hat alternatives but run the big risk of getting blacklisted by the search engines which could be fatal for many websites.

I certainly adopt white hat techniques (maybe some grey hat!) purely that over time I get the desired results in the search engine rankings and eliminate the risk of being removed from the SERPs.