White Hat vs. Black Hat - High Risk and Low Risk Tactics
White Hat and Black Hat Tactics
Posted on Jul 24, 2008 :: You should follow us on twitter here 
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At a recent SMX Conference, Matt Cutts (head of Google Web Spam) gave great examples of Black Hat and White Hat tactics as either high risk or low risk. Here are some blackhat/whitehat tactics and their relative risk factors:
| Topic | High Risk "Black Hat Tactics" | Low Risk "White Hat Tactics" |
| Cloaking | Showing different content to different users based on user-agent(i.e. Googlebot) | Showing the same content to all users |
| Doorway Pages | Little or no useful content pages meant to rank well for a specific keyword set and then funnel traffic to a specific page | Useful/Unique/Benefitial content meant to rank well for a specific keyword set. |
| Link Bait | Creating stories that are blatantly false merely to bait people into linking to your site | Creating unique, beneficial, and interesting stories that allow web masters an editorial choice (informed choice) to link to the content. |
| Widget Bait | Creating a widget that has
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| Search Results in Search Results | Compiles a list of links where the person has to click again before they get to the real content they were looking for | Provides content that is what the user was looking for |
Trust and credibility is a limited commodity on the Internet and is much easier to lose than gain. Higher risk items can quickly lose your credibility and cause your site to be banned from the search engines. With more and more SEOs working inhouse on their own company website, higher risk tactics are just not an option.
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Filed Under: White Hat, Black Hat, Tactics, SEO
Please feel free to leave a comment or question about the article
"White Hat vs. Black Hat - High Risk and Low Risk Tactics"
Comments
2
Ryan Jan 17, 2009
Trust and credibility is a limited commodity on the Internet and is much easier to lose than gain.
Nice quote man.
People who have longterm business goals, always prefer White Hat Tactics, but people who just want to make money and go away( and normally they come back with another idea) use Black Hat Tactics.
3
custom web design Jan 20, 2009
Useful chart for internet marketing people and nice comparison of White Hat vs. Black Hat
4
Mike Feb 26, 2009
Trust and credibility is a limited commodity on the Internet and is much easier to lose than gain.
Nice quote man. People who have long term business goals, always prefer White Hat Tactics, but people who just want to make money and go away( and normally they come back with another idea) use Black Hat Tactics.
1
Carrie Website Maintenance Gal Aug 26, 2008
there was a roundtable at this years SES in San Jose with Bruce Clay, Dave Naylor, and others talking about black hat tactics vs. white hat tactics.
Very interesting, if you can find the blog transcript of it floating around the web it´s worth a read. Matt cutts got up at one point to talk about companies being penalized.