The split into white and black hats sounds like jargon, but the question behind it is practical: who the site is optimized for. White Hat SEO works for the visitor, within the rules Google publishes in its Search Essentials.
Black Hat SEO works for the algorithm instead of the person who opens the page. It exploits a gap in how search engines rank, and it lasts exactly as long as the gap stays open.
What White Hat work is
It includes, among other things:
- research into the words people really use when they look for you
- content written for people, on the subject of the page it sits on
- titles, descriptions and URLs that describe what is on the page
- speed, and a site that works properly on a phone
- internal links that help the visitor and the search engine find their way
- links from sites whose subject is close to yours
- and the other factors that decide how a page is read and trusted
Google ranks pages on a large number of signals whose exact list is not public, so the work follows what can be measured rather than a checklist. And it is measured by the enquiries and sales it brings, not by a position on a report.
What Black Hat looks like and what it costs
The usual techniques:
- keywords stuffed into the text until it stops reading like language
- hidden text and links that the search engine sees and the visitor does not
- pages made only for search engines, which send the visitor somewhere else
- content copied from other sites, or produced in bulk with nobody checking it
- links bought in bulk from sites that exist only to sell them
- an expired domain or another site’s reputation borrowed to rank pages that have nothing to do with it
- and the other tricks Google lists as spam, a list that grows as new ones appear
Google’s spam policies say what happens next: a site that breaks them may rank lower or not appear in the results at all, through its automated systems or a manual action by a person at Google. The penalty rarely arrives at once, which is part of the problem. First the positions slip, then the site drops out for some searches, and in the worst case the whole domain leaves the results.
Coming back is harder than falling. Recovery can take longer than doing the work properly would have, and a business that gives up and buys a new domain loses everything the old one had earned. The penalty lands on your domain, not on the agency, and often long after the contract has ended.
How to spot it in an offer
Black Hat is rarely bought knowingly. It usually arrives as a package that promises a result in a month and does not say how. The signs that repeat:
- a guarantee of first place, especially by a date
- a result promised within weeks
- a price well below the market, with hundreds of links promised
- an offer that does not say what will be done on your site
- a refusal to give you access to your own site, or to say what was changed
We work only the first way, because the site stays yours after we stop working on it. If you have an SEO offer in front of you and are not sure what it says, ask us. The consultation is free, even when the answer is that the offer is fine. What the work looks like month by month, with its scope and price, is on SEO services.