SEO Methods

For the most part, SEO methods are branded into two distinct categories: black hat SEO or white hat SEO. Industry commentators use these terms to refer to techniques that abide by search-engine recommended strictures and those that don't adhere to search engine recommendations.

White Hat SEO Techniques

White hat is the former of the two techniques and produces better results that can increase growth of a website's "searchability" over time. White hat SEO design attempts to organically build SEO content that will be useful to users and instead of trying to trick web crawlers into ranking their page, will make information more accessible and applicable to the search.

Black Hat SEO Techniques

Black hat techniques, on the other hand usually involve design that is implemented with the full knowledge and intent of deceiving the search engine visitor, ignoring standards of SEO website design . Implementation is based on the certainty that the site will most likely be banned once the search engine uncovers what the black hat site is attempting.

Depending on the search engine, these black hat techniques may boost up the site's ratings temporarily but will ultimately fail. BMW Germany and Ricoh Germany were both removed by Google for deceptive operations in 2006 but were later reinstated after an apology and revisal of their design.

Some black hat techniques involve hidden text (text that is the same color as the background of a page) or text that is located off screen. Another more crafty method may be to present two different pages for cases where the website is located by a machine or a human.

Choosing the Right SEO Methods

Black hat SEO may be tempting to some businesses looking at acquiring some quick online traffic. However, for companies looking to grow over time and provide ethical service to their customers, white hat SEO is the only acceptable form of search engine optimization .