Online business owners need to carry out targeted digital marketing in order to gain distinct visibility and stand apart from competitors. With so many businesses vying for the customer’s attention, it may feel overwhelming to get the attention of the customer and have them purchase from your site.
However, there are strategies that can help you rank well and garner attention to get your sales steadily growing. One such effective strategy is Search Engine Optimization or SEO.
A Brief understanding of Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
While there are exhaustive definitions of SEO out there, the most basic way to put it, is this: SEO is the digital practice of enhancing the quality and quantity of visitors to your website through organic search engine results. This way, when your target is what users type in a query in the search bar, they discover your business, visit your website and are so impressed with it that they end up purchasing from it.
For example, if you have a furniture business in Las Vegas and every time someone types “furniture online Las Vegas”, your website should come on the first page of the Search engine result page (SERP). This is the power of SEO. It not only helps customers become aware of your existence but also makes your website a revenue-generating medium.
Why is it such a big deal?
With millions of businesses online, it is important that a Google search yields only the most relevant and meaningful results for the user’s benefit. With SEO, Google comes to know that your business is the most relevant for a given search query and lets your brand connect with the searcher. As a business owner SEO helps your website to reach out to relevant and potential buyers.
Here’s how the statistics stand in favor of SEO:
Junto reveals that for 57 percent of B2B marketers, SEO is the most successful marketing initiative when it comes to generating leads.
According to Hubspot, 61 percent of marketers agree that improving their SEO strategy and growing their organic presence is their top inbound marketing priority.
There are roughly over 2.2 million searches made in a single day worldwide, and that is only using Google. Your SEO strategy needs to be strong in order to land on the first page ranking – a position that tremendously boosts the likelihood of the user interacting with your brand and giving your business.
The Three main types of SEO
There are three broad categories of SEO depending on
a. The time it takes for results to show up
b. The amount you end up spending,
c. The overall risk of the whole strategy, and
d. The value it imparts to your brand.
They are termed as black hat, white hat, and gray hat SEO.
You might be wondering “Why hats?” Back in the 1940s, western films were made in the USA and they featured characters that wore hats. The color of the hat symbolized the nature of the character: white hats (heroes) and black hats (villains). This was basically a depiction of good and evil; much like the strategies used to rank well.
Let’s dive deeper and look at each of these three techniques in detail:
1) Black hat SEO
These are a set of SEO practices that are used to improve a page’s ranking. However, they are in direct or indirect violation of the search engines’ terms of service.
While it does deliver outcomes faster, it can also lead to a severe backlash in the form of negative rankings and drop in your website ranking position in SERPs. It basically is resorting to shortcuts (ie. playing against the rules) to get to the top of Search Engine Result Pages, but it comes with a price to pay.
Explore the Google Webmaster Guidelines to see which techniques have been specifically listed as black hat SEO techniques. Black hat SEO goes to the extent of doing those exact things which Google Guidelines specifically mention as things NOT to be done.
Some examples include using spam links, resorting to keyword stuffing, content automation, doorway pages, cloaking, and using hidden text and hidden links.
Black hat SEO has the potential to get your site banned from Google. The penalties can have a long-term effect on your page ranking and the traffic that you get.
2) White hat SEO
It is the most ideal way of website optimization for SEO. It is considered to be highly beneficial in the long run even though it may take prolonged efforts.
White hat SEO completely adheres to the Google Webmaster Guidelines. This form of SEO focuses on the human element rather than prioritizing the search engines.
It is no surprise that white hat SEO is less risky and yields lasting results which are of value over the long run. Many immensely successful SEO marketing companies that recommend white hat SEO strategies get incredible ROI for their clients’ digital marketing budgets.
White hat SEO generally involves best practices: using good quality content, HTML optimization, faster site loading, mobile friendliness, and proper restructuring of websites, adequate link acquisition campaigns which are held high by good quality content.
3) Gray hat SEO
Some marketers also adopt gray hat SEO techniques. They haven’t been explicitly back listed by Google, but are considered dubious techniques by a majority of the SEO experts.
With constantly evolving Google algorithms you would never know when these gray hat methods would become black hat and lead to severe penalties being imposed on your site.
Some of these methods include
- SEO squatting (purchasing expired domains and adding new content on it to take advantage of its higher ranking).
- Constant changes to the website design or structure without adding any new, informative content.
- Adding a comments box where spammy links can harm your backlinking efforts and invite Google penalties.
To reiterate, it doesn’t make much sense to get on the bad side of Google. Even if you aren’t sure if the method will violate Google guidelines, its best to stay away from it and focus solely on white hat SEO.
Summing it up
These are the three types of SEO techniques that marketers use to improve their brand’s organic page ranking. Credible digital marketing companies will always suggest going with white hat SEO techniques.
They may take longer to yield results, but they won’t contravene any of Google’s guidelines and hence won’t invite penalties like dropped rankings or total banning of the site. These risks make white hat SEO a more preferred optimization technique as compared to black hat and gray hat SEO.
Author Bio – Jamie Barton is the author of this article. To know more information about Types of SEO. please visit our website https://seoresellerscanada.ca/types-of-seo/
Great post! I had no idea about the different types of SEO that were band. Thank you for the info and I’ll definitely stay away from the black hats.
Exactly, it’s much better & safer to focus your time & resources on White Hat methods!
I would rather stay on the white face as it is always worth to be patience 🙂
This is really helpful! Thank you for the information. Also pinning for future references.
Thank you!
Good to have read this article. I didn’t even know that there are different types of SEO. Thank you for sharing this informative post.
Wow! I never knew SEO was so involved! Thanks to this article, I know I’m on the right track. Thanks.
It is always better to stick to white hat methods even if they take longer to show some results. Risking the integrity and authority of your blog over a short spike of traffic is not worth it. Nice article.
Exactly!
As a new blogger, this article is super helpful ! I will definitely keep them in mind while I create and edit content on my blog
Seo is really important..so thank you for this. It’s really helpful and i learned a lot.
As a blogger, one must know this stuffs but these are too much technical stuffs. I focus on writing quality content . Thanks for sharing a very useful topic and a new blogger must have these knowledge .
Great Read. I am always looking to learn more about SEO. I pinned this for reference as well 🙂
Thanks Kimmy 😉
Thanks for the explanation. It’s always important to know where you stand with your SEO strategy to make sure you’re not going into the Dark Side 😛
I had no idea SEO strategies could be so sneaky. Luckily, I would have no clue how to do any of those grey or black methods. Good to know that this exists, though.
You have to know about them in order to avoid using them actually 🙂
Love the graphics, helps make it easier to read and understand. Thanks’
Yes, totally!
Helpful. SEO is really very very important for online business.
I am focusing only on white hat SEO from the start. And never thought about black hat SEO or gray hat SEO. Got to new about Gray hat SEO.
The graphics used in post are really helpful to understand the concepts easily.
Thank you for sharing!
Thank you for reading Vanesh. I stick to White Hat as well!
Thanks for the info. However, SEO is quite alien subject to me. I have just entered into the business with my new parenting website called childcarestar.com, would love your guidance on the SEO front. Thank you so much.
If your still new don’t worry about it that much. SEO has so many levels & techniques but are not all for solo bloggers. Just focus on some basic on-Page SEO (using relevant keywords, search google for what ranks already for these keywords etc). I’ll soon publish a post about the must-do for all bloggers, so stick with it to read it!
I also go for the white hat approach or aim for it at least. Just in terms of upfront, honesty.
Exactly the same here 🙂
I found this really helpful! I’m just starting to understand SEO for my website so it was good to know about the ‘black hat’. Thanks for sharing this.
Happy to have you here Shirley!
Great post on many levels, I liked the graph the designated on/off page SEO, I wasn’t aware of some of them (i.e. silo). Grey hat SEO definitely seems give & take, everyone leverages SM, yet how you do it is important!
The white hat approach is something I am aiming for because it makes a blogger look trust worthy expert.
Yes I definitely agree!
A great guide to SEO terms and tactics, some of which I hadn’t heard of. I’m still trying to get traction with Google using white hat methods but it’s slow going.