White Hat SEO Vs Gray Hat SEO - A Guide For Beginners

White hat or gray hat, which one is better than the other? It is always recommended by experts to use white label SEO services. But why does nobody recommend gray hat SEO? Maybe you know what white hat, gray hat, and black hat mean. You may have listened to these terms in industries other than SEO also.

But here we will tell you about the actual meaning of these services in the SEO industry. Why are all the SEO companies are claiming to provide white hat SEO services? Why no company is there with black hat SEO services? And what it means when someone says, no white and black, use gray hat SEO service. All of your doubts related to the white hat vs gray hat topic will be cleared. So let's get started with this amazing post on the white hat SEO vs Gray Hat SEO topic.

Understand The Definition
Let's start with understanding the basic things about white, gray, and black services. Some say it simply that a service provided legally is a white hat, and the black hat services are illegal. But what about gray hats? It is something that is not completely white or black.

Firstly Understand Black Hat SEO
Wait before you understand white hat SEO services or gray hat services. Try to understand the black hat SEO services. Black hat SEO services are simply against the Search engine’s guidelines. When someone uses prohibited tactics for traffic, it is known as black hat SEO.

White Hat SEO
On the other side, white hat SEO services are what simply go according to the guidelines. No prohibited practice is performed to gain traffic. Everything is done being to rules and terms.

Gray Hat SEO
Now comes the most important among these three. Gray hat SEO services are known as something which is just between white hat SEO and black hat SEO. Some experts call it a mixture of white hat SEO and black hat SEO.

Understand The Differences
Now let's try to understand the difference between the major two types of SEO services. The first one is the white hat service and the second one is the gray hat service. These both are common in use. A reputed website never uses black hat SEO services. Because the search engines ban websites if black hat tactics are used.

Content: The first difference is the quality of the content. The white hat SEO is dependent upon content quality. However gray hat believes that by using proper tactics one can rank higher even with thin content.
Sharing Tactics: White hat SEO services believe more in organic sharing. But gray hat service can use various other tactics to get a post shared most.
Page Layouts: A website using white hat service won't compromise with the page layout for revenue. No ads will be placed in-between content. While black hat or gray hat websites have complex layouts.
Links: No paid links are used in white hat SEO.
Reputation: Huge difference is there in the reputation of both the services.
Violation: White hat SEO never violates the search engine guidelines. But gray hats violate it sometimes.
Time: White hat services take time to show results, but gray hat SEO techniques show quick results.
Durability: White hat SEO services will show results for a longer period. But gray and black hat SEO methods are for a short time-span.

Understand The Pros & Cons
Both of these services have dark and bright sides. Whether we talk about white hat SEO services or gray hat SEO services. They both have different pros and cons, let's talk more about these pros and cons.

White Hat SEO
White hat SEO is considered to be the best. But still, some webmasters are using the gray and even black hat SEO, why is it happening? It is just because of the cons that white hat SEO services have.

Pros
White hat SEO will never get your website penalized.
White hat SEO has a good reputation in the internet world.
Search engines will love your website because you are following their guidelines.
White hat SEO builds a trustworthy relationship with your customers.

Cons
It is expensive as compared to the gray and black hat SEO service.
It takes more experience to apply all the white hat SEO tactics.
You will have to spend a lot of time to rank your website higher with a white hat.

Gray Hat SEO
Gray hat SEO is something like a shortcut to more traffic. If you don't have the patience to wait for the white hat SEO services to work effectively. Then you can choose this shortcut. But keep in mind shortcuts have side-effects also, so let's have a look at it.

Pros
It can show you more quick results.
Gray hat SEO can be done with less experienced staff.
It is less expensive as compared to white hat SEO.

Cons
Gray hat SEO can get your website banned by some search engines.
Not completely, but you are going against the search engine guidelines.
It shows results for a short period only. So every time you will have to pay money to get results.

What Google Says?
All of you may want to know that what Google says about gray and white hat SEO services. There are some guidelines published by popular search engines. Search engines expect all webmasters to follow these guidelines. These guidelines are about search engine optimization and content quality. Most of the webmasters follow what Google says. There are recommendations and guidelines from Bing also.

Guidelines
These guidelines talk about Google’s algorithms used to place websites on SERPs. These algorithms are Payday, Penguin, and Panda. Also, Google talks about scraped content. Google makes it clear to not use a cloaking method.

Let's Summarize!
White hat SEO services are good for the long term health of a website. A black hat SEO service can get quick results for you. But it is not that good enough. Using black hat techniques can put your website in danger. However, you can use a few white hat SEO techniques and a few black hat services. Doing SEO this way will be known as gray hat SEO services. So this way is good to use to get quick results with less effort and money.