Whether you are doing your own search engine optimization or having a company do it for you, you should know if the techniques being used are considered “white hat” (ethical and acceptable) or “black hat” (unethical and no longer acceptable).
Examples of White Hat Techniques:
- Unique, relevant and quality content
- Correct meta tag practices
- Descriptive ALT tags for images
- Page titles and file names that accurately describe the page
- Quality inbound and outbound links
Examples of Black Hat Techniques:
- Keyword spamming or stuffing
- Cloaking or doorway pages that serve the page one way to the search engine spiders and another way to the visitors
- Spamdexing or abusing search engine algorithms
- Hidden or invisible text
Of course, the search engine optimization technology and best practices are always changing. To stay up-to-date with the latest techniques do your research. Some good sites include:
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3 Comments»
Michael Goldstein
10. October 2006 | 20:00 hI agree with you about knowing if you are using white or black hat techniques. However, the risk factor really does need to be considered as well. I just don’t know of anyone who is willing to take the risk since BWM was banned from Google over the summer.
Char
11. October 2006 | 11:00 hMichael, thanks for your insight. I think the big risk people take is not knowing what is considered acceptable before they start. If they don’t follow the white hat standards then they are at an extremely high risk of getting banned. I’d love to get your insight on some of my other posts.
Essential Keystrokes » Tricks and Treats
31. October 2006 | 13:33 h[...] SEO Techniques - White Hat or Black Hat [...]