By Jayne Schultheis — The ethics of white hat/black hat SEO are worth exploring as search engines continuously assess the efforts of content creators who try to "cut through the red tape" of optimization. The ethics of SEO are complicated, but important to keep in mind as you build your content marketing strategy. Let's look at both ethical and unethical SEO techniques, and the types of returns you can expect from each.

What are white hat SEO techniques?

White hat techniques refer to legitimate and ethical SEO strategies used to improve a website’s search engine ranking.

Examples of white hat techniques

These techniques are in line with the guidelines set by search engines like Google, aiming for sustainable and long-term success.

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• Quality content creation. Develop high-quality, relevant, and valuable content that addresses the needs and interests of your target audience. This includes well-researched articles, engaging blog posts, and informative videos.
• Keyword research and optimization. Identify relevant keywords and incorporate them naturally into your content, titles, headings, and meta descriptions to improve visibility in search results. This is one of Rellify's secret weapons. With AI-driven tools, Rellify is able to find unique topics and keywords within your particular niche that will naturally rank well in search engines.
• On-page SEO. Optimize individual web pages to rank higher and earn more relevant traffic. This includes proper use of HTML tags (like title tags and meta descriptions), optimizing images with alt text, improving page load speed, and implementing a mobile-friendly design.
• Technical SEO. Does the website meet technical requirements for search engines? This involves improving site architecture, optimizing XML sitemaps, fixing broken links, and maintaining proper use of redirects.
• Earn quality backlinks. Earn links from reputable and relevant websites through outreach, guest posting, and creating valuable content that naturally lends itself to link-building.
• User experience (UX) optimization. Improve the overall user experience on your website by making sure it's easy to navigate, visually appealing, and provides clear calls to action. A good UX can reduce bounce rates and increase engagement.
• Local SEO. Claim and optimize your Google My Business listing. Encourage local reviews and make sure that your NAP (Name, Address, Phone Number) information is consistent across all local directories.
• Social media engagement. An active social media presence can help drive traffic to your website, engage with your audience, and build brand awareness. While social signals themselves may not directly impact SEO, social media can still help increase visibility as another form of online presence.

What are black hat SEO techniques?

Black hat techniques in SEO are unethical and manipulative strategies used to artificially boost a website’s search engine ranking.

Examples of black hat SEO

These methods violate search engine guidelines and can lead to severe SEO risks and penalties, including de-indexing, lowered search visibility, loss of organic traffic, or a ban from search engine results.

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• Keyword stuffing. This is overloading a web page with keywords or phrases in an unnatural way to try and manipulate search rankings. It  often results in awkward, unreadable content.
• Cloaking. You present different content to search engines than what you're presenting to users. This may be done to deceive the search engine into ranking the page higher.
• Invisible text and links. Some sneaky web designers set the text to match the background color or use very small font sizes. Users can't read it, but search engines can. This is usually done to include more keywords or backlinks without them being visible to users.
• Link farms. Link farming is the process of creating or participating in networks of low-quality websites that link to each other to artificially inflate the number of backlinks to a site. These links are not earned naturally and are often irrelevant.
• Paid links. When you buy or sell links with the intent of manipulating search engine rankings, search engines like Google view it as a violation of their guidelines.
• Content scraping. This is the practice of copying content from other websites and republishing it as your own. This can lead to duplicate content issues and is considered theft of intellectual property. With the proliferation of AI-generated content, this is a practice that's rampant, as most generative AI is produced from content scraped from other websites. This is why fact-checking and humanizing any AI-generated text is so important to your brand credibility.
• Doorway pages. This is when you create multiple pages optimized for specific keywords that lead to a single destination, providing a poor user experience.
• Negative SEO. Some websites try to harm a competitor's site by building spammy backlinks to it or employing other tactics to get it penalized by search engines. Don't do it — you're better than that!
• Entirely AI-generated content. When you use software like OpenAI to create large volumes of low-quality content quickly, you're signaling to both readers and search engines that you're not actually an expert in your field. Experts write content that's unique.

What to do if you've been penalized for using "Black hat techniques"

Noticeable drops in organic traffic or search engine rankings can indicate that you have been penalized. Check Google Search Console for any notifications that indicate a manual action or penalty. Google often provides specific details about the type of penalty and the reasons behind it.

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Conduct a website audit and look for the types of "black hat" issues and strategies we mentioned earlier.

Address the issues

If you have acquired unnatural or spammy backlinks, use the Google Disavow Tool to indicate which links should not be considered. Reach out to webmasters to request removal of harmful links if possible. Correct or remove any hidden text, doorway pages, or other deceptive practices.

Update your content strategy

Shift to creating high-quality, valuable, and original content that adheres to SEO best practices. Work toward ethical SEO that follows search engine guidelines such as proper keyword usage, on-page optimization, and quality link-building. Focus on user experience, too, including site usability, load speed, mobile responsiveness.

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The sooner you change course, the better your chances of avoiding reputation damage. Playing by the rules may be time-consuming and slow to show results, but it’s still your best bet in building an authoritative and enduring web presence. 

Submit a reconsideration request

If you’ve received a manual penalty, prepare a reconsideration request through Google Search Console. In your request, detail the issues, provide evidence of the steps you've taken to rectify the issues, and show a genuine commitment to adhering to SEO compliance and best practices going forward. Don't worry — it's not the end of the world. Recovery from penalties might take some time, and maybe a few algorithm updates, but you'll most likely bounce back from any algorithmic penalty or traffic loss.

Let Rellify help get your SEO on track

Avoiding black hat techniques and focusing on long-term SEO strategy centered on authoritative content is your best bet for boosting organic growth. At Rellify, we're committed to white hat SEO. We help our clients create relevant, optimized, and well-researched content that naturally ranks well on search engines. And with a state-of-the-art Relliverse,™ you can leverage custom AI to find the right topics, use the right keywords, and answer the right questions. Ready to find out more? Schedule a quick demo with one of our experts today.

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