Seeing black, white and grey

Search engine optimization has been around since the inception of the internet many years ago, but it was elementary until internet marketing started booming. Once that happened, search engine optimization was catapulted to the fore and has not stopped since. The search engines are continuously evolving to provide searchers with the best possible services. However, they also need to evolve to protect the fairness of website ranking in the SERPs and to protect the best interests of searchers worldwide.

The purpose of optimization

The purpose of optimization is to allow searchers access to the best websites to suit their search criteria first and then to lesser suited websites as the SERPs go on. This ranking is the bane of many a website’s existence because it is hard to attain a favourable spot. It is then even more difficult to maintain and keep that spot once you have reached it.

That is the purpose of search engine optimization. To ensure that only the best attain favourable positions and in order to be the best, you constantly need to work at it. If not, your ranking will slip to a less favourable position down the SERPs.

As optimization has evolved, it has done so to level the playing field on a regular basis. There are always those that are determined to find ways of bucking the system. When they do, the search engines sit up and take note. Then they work on ways to prevent the cheaters from being able to cheat their way to the top unfairly while others work hard at honest SEO tactics for a favourable rank.

Black and grey

You may think that in a world of fair and unfair there is only black and white. However, in the world of SEO there is black, white and also grey. Now, black hat SEO is a very bad thing to indulge in. These are the illegal and heavily punishable optimization methods. These methods are likely to get your website banned from the search engines for good.

As much as you want to get to the top and do it fast, black hat SEO will only get you very far in the opposite direction. Then you get grey hat SEO. This is a less criminal optimization, but it is none the less frowned upon as not favourable.

Human visitors and the engines alike dislike anything but white hat SEO and using even grey hat can land your website in a lot of trouble. It is better to just steer clear of black and great hat SEO methods for the sake of your online reputation.

White for purity

White hat SEO is the only way to go when you are optimizing your website. This will get you noticed and keep your reputation squeaky clean with the engines and crawlers. Organic SEO falls very clearly under white hat methods.

White hat may not catapult you to the top ranking spot above your competition immediately. It may take time and lots of hard work whereas black hat may be far easier. However, white hat will never get you into trouble with the engines or banned from the SERPs.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 16th, 2009 at 9:51 am and is filed under SEO. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.