Hi, I have tried to look around but was wanting some clarity White hat Grey Hat Black hat Now i'm guess black hat stuff is illegal, so theres no way im going to go there. What is Grey hat? Sometimes illegal? :/
All the hat colors could be confusing Here's an article about the difference between black and white hats: http://www.silverdisc.co.uk/articles/seohats/ Grey hat SEO is something between white and black. But there are also other colors, like blue hat: "Blue Hat SEO is essentially the study of advanced Internet marketing and search engine optimization techniques.": http://www.bluehatseo.com/what-is-blue-hat-seo/ Some people also wear a green hat: "A Green Hat SEO is someone who is relatively new to search engine optimisation and hasn’t much experience with the different SEO hat shades: white, grey and black hat search engine optimization techniques.": http://www.daniweb.com/forums/thread249051.html Any other colors?
Greyhat is questionable tactics. Mostly it involves stuff that should probably get a penalty from Google, but since Google isn't really cracking down it people do it anyway. For example, spammy blog commenting. You are passing your marketing cost onto other blog owners, but since Google hasn't really cracked down hard on it many people do it.
Black hat SEO is not illegal. Black hat is the general term for SEO techniques that are against major search engine policies. This could be link farms, cloaked links, mass auto link generators, bulk automated content and stuff like that. All these things can get your site penalised by SEs. BUT not always do. In fact there are many many people out there making a ton of money using black hat techniques. White hat is stuff that is generally accepted by major SEs. Stuff like writing regular regular unique content, using heading tags, internal linking. This won't get you penalized by SEs. Grey hat techniques are techniques that could be used in ethical or unthethical fashion. Techniques like forum and blog linkbuilding, buying links are grey hat.
Hi, What I've known is only white hat and black hat.... White hat is a legal while black hat is an illegal one.... You better use white hat SEO....
Black Hat != Illegal (necessarily - there are spam laws). A lot of it is just nasty techniques that usually have a short lived effectiveness and involve violating the terms and conditions of just about everyone involved. It's spammy, doesn't build long term credibility, etc... Then there are the black hat techniques to beef up your SERPS - but that too, is usually short lived. You can see a lot of the crap here as well - like those fleeting posts that come around with links and nothing to add to the conversation. Does anyone actually click on that stuff? Personally, that's black hat. I just think those types of tactics will not help you in the long run. On the other hand, I urge you to learn the techniques, to at least know what you are up against! Best of Luck!
Whitehat - Good seo which is compliant with the search engines guidelines. Greyhat - Borderline seo tactics. Blackhat - No no seo tactics.
Not all black hat techniques are illegal...of course some are (like trademark keyword stuffing, pagejacking etc), but can spam laws only refer to email and text, not general black hat backlink spam. In saying that it's definately not recommended because it is against most SEs policies and will eventually get you banned. It can make you money in the short term however...
also, moe or less it depends on what you wear, may try grey and white, they will be perfect with other suitable colors