What is white hat SEO and Black hat SEO?

[Humayun]

[Jake]

It's been suggested that Google may have coined the term Black Hat, representing any deceptive methods of raising a page's search engine ranking, one example: a deceptive sales site may show a completely different, more user friendly version of the site when it detects a visit by a search engine spider, this sort of cloaking technique can get a site removed from the search index.
While Hat SEO would be methods approved by the search engines, typically involving creating quality content and organizing it so search spiders can easily locate it. I believe they state that any links to a site created for the purpose of influencing search ranking are considered a violation, virtually every webmaster has gotten links solely to boost ranking, some borderline behavior is referred to as Gray Hat.

[Robert]

White hat SEO means ethical way of doing optimization (according to webmaster guidelines), Black hat SEO means non ethical way of doing optimization(spamming, duplicate content, hidden links etc)

[Miraj Gazi]

Hi Humayun, Simply White Hat SEO is to perform your SEO practices according to the Search Engine guidelines.and if you not obey the search engine guide lines then it will be spamming as well as black Hat SEO.

Now Black Hat SEO is useless because search Engines are very very Smarter than ever before . You will be penalize if you are involved with such kind of black hat practices. So before starting SEO activity , learn the Guidelines first.

[Hal Smith]

Here is something on white and black hat http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/W/White_Hat_SEO.html


Hal Smith
URLdreamer Consultant

[zhang]

Since the Wild West days of the late 1990s, SEOs have been grouped into two camps – the “black hats” and the “white hats”. Over time, these distinctions have become little more than caricatures, cartoon villains and heroes that only exist in our individual imaginations, usually embellished to suit our marketing agendas. Even when grounded in specific tactics, “black” vs. “white” is a lot like “conservative” vs. “liberal” – the definition changes with the year and every person you ask, and that definition almost always comes loaded with assumptions and judgments.

Unfortunately, too many business owners still choose their SEOs based on the hat they wear, even when that hat only comes out on sales calls. So, I’d like to ask some better questions. There are real strategic and tactical differences behind what we often think of as “white” and “black” hat SEO, and those differences are what you need to understand to make the right choices for your own business.

[Karthikeyan]

If we follow the search engine guidelines for website is known as white hat SEO and if we don’t follow the guidelines and make spamming is known as Black hat SEO.