SEO Hats - LBS

SEO emerged as a response to the knowledge of how PR and SERP rankings work and that they can be somewhat manipulated. The methods of manipulations that can be used for SEO fall into three categories: white hat, gray hat and black hat SEO. Each “hat” denotes the ethical level of the methods that fall under it (often measured from the perspective of search engines). White hat SEO is considered the most ethical and includes methods that are generally accepted by search engines. White hat SEO also includes the most time consuming and long-term SEO methods. White hat methods include: quality organic content, semantic HTML mark-up, guest blogging, good keyword use, link baiting for quality inbound links and internal linking. Black hat methods include keyword stuffing, cloaking, hidden text, link spam, doorway pages and link farms. Additionally, there is a gray era between the two methods called gray hat SEO. We’ll elaborate on the difference between specific white, gray and black hat link building techniques.