What It Does and Does Not Mean to Be a White Hat SEO Agency
A “white hat SEO agency” does SEO the right way. That means nothing unethical or even “shady.” No keyword stuffing, no buying links, doing nothing that goes against the law or search engines, etc. That said, it does mean doing everything possible to ensure our clients’ SEO is as effective as it can be.
Website Depot, where I work, is a white hat SEO agency. We do everything the right way, yes, but we also do it well. The “white hat/black hat” dichotomy comes from old movies, old stories, the “white hats” are the good guys and the “black hats” the bad guys. We don’t just follow white hat techniques because we believe in them; we follow them because they’re most effective for our clients.
No Shortcuts
In a very real way, that’s what a white hat SEO agency does. We don’t take any shortcuts. All of the “black hat” techniques are really just that. They’re shortcuts. They’re ways of trying to “game the system.” An easy way to think about it: black hat tactics are focused on what will “work” with search engines. White hat tactics, on the other hand, are focused on what users want. As search engines want to cater better to more users, search engines want what users want.
An Example
The most common black hat practice is probably “keyword stuffing.” Google and just about every other search engine has gone to great lengths to make keyword stuffing null. But, there are still some unscrupulous (and unsuccessful) SEO “experts” who try keyword stuffing.
The definition of “keyword stuffing” is, essentially, creating a bunch of content that is nonsense but is filled with keywords. This is the kind of thing that you’ll know as soon as you see it. If you’ve read content that doesn’t follow any sentence structure or make sense, but has all kinds of keywords in it, then you’ve seen keyword stuffing.
Unfortunately, keyword stuffing has made something of a comeback due to AI. Now, black hat agencies don’t even have to write out (or copy and paste) their own keyword stuffing.
Google’s “E-E-A-T,” of course, stands for “Experience,” “Expertise,” “Authoritativeness,” and “Trustworthiness.” You’ll note that none of that is in keyword stuffing. In fact, keyword stuffing is the exact polar opposite of that. No experience or expertise is conveyed. The author is clearly not an expert, and the content is as far from “trustworthy” as content can be.
No user can be helped by keyword-stuffed content. They will not be able to glean any value from it. It’s a shortcut. After all, it’s a lot easier to type/copy and paste/ask an AI to create keywords than it is to write something valuable.
A Long Term Effective Strategy
Of the many flaws in black hat SEO, perhaps the greatest is its short duration. Even if it works, it’s ephemeral. It can’t be built upon. There’s no sustained strategy, nothing that lasts. In the event that black hat strategies work for you, they’ll only work for a short period of time.
Think about it. Return to the example of keyword stuffing. Say that you have some keyword stuffing content on your site. Say you don’t get hammered by Google’s (massive and debilitating) penalties and that your business does grow. Then what?
Eventually, someone is going to come to your site and see how meager and ineffectual your content is. Google really does look for this stuff. Sooner or later, they’re going to catch on to what you’re doing. When they do, the penalties will be severe indeed. Then, you’ll be in an even worse place than you started.
You’ve heard the phrase in other contexts (most likely comic books/movies), but crime doesn’t pay.
What White Hat Can Do: Organic, Long-Lasting Success
With a well-developed white hat SEO strategy, you can build organically. With your site, social media, and blogs all working in tandem, you can continually put your company in front of new potential customers/clients. Moreover, this can be scaled to your business.
So, when your business does get more successful, you can scale up your SEO. Consequently, if necessary, you can scale it down, too. None of that functionality is available with black hat techniques, to say the very least.
More Than Just a White Hat SEO Agency
Better for your customers. Better for the search engines and, ultimately, better for your business. White hat is, indeed, where it’s at. Yes, here at Website Depot, we’re a white hat agency. But, we’re also so much more than that. We have an entire team of not just SEO experts but content creators like myself, web developers, designers, and so much more.
To see how we can help you, schedule a free consultation today.
