White hat / Black hat SEO

In SEO (Search Engine Optimization) terminology, the terms "black hat" and "white hat" are used to describe two different practices or tactics that webmasters and marketing professionals use to improve the ranking of web pages in search engine results.

1.    Black Hat SEO

"Black hat" SEO refers to practices used to manipulate search engine algorithms with the aim of unfairly boosting the ranking of web pages. These techniques are typically against search engine guidelines and can be unethical or even illegal.

Examples of black hat practices include:

• Keyword stuffing: Placing invisible text full of keywords to increase their density on the page, but it's not visible to visitors.

• Spamming: Repeating keywords with nonsensical text or in an unnatural context to increase their visibility to search engines.

• Buying links: Paying other websites for links placed in various locations to increase the number of inbound links, regardless of the quality or relevance of those links.

• Cloaking: Presenting different content to search engines and actual visitors to gain a better position in search results.

Search engines continuously improve their algorithms to detect and penalize websites using black hat techniques. If caught, a website may face penalties, decreased rankings, or even removal from search engine indexes.

2.    White Hat SEO

On the other hand, "white hat" SEO denotes an approach that focuses on creating high-quality and relevant content that is useful to website visitors. White hat SEO practices comply with search engine guidelines and are aimed at long-term growth and building trust with both visitors and search engines.

Examples of white hat practices include:

• Quality content: Creating original, informative, and valuable content that addresses the questions and needs of the target audience.
• Natural link building: Earning inbound links through organic content promotion, social media engagement, and establishing authentic relationships with other websites. 
• Proper optimization: Using appropriate meta tags, titles, and descriptions that clearly describe the content of the page and its context.
• Speed and accessibility: Ensuring fast page loading and responsive design to enhance the user experience.

White hat SEO focuses on building a sustainable and trustworthy presence with search engines and users, which typically results in more stable and long-lasting positions in search engine results.

Fun fact: The names come from classic western movies where the colors of the hats were indicative of the characters and their role in the story. The heroes, who represented moral values and fought for justice, often wore white hats, while the villains in the same films wore black hats, symbolizing their dishonest and unethical nature.

Although Black Hat SEO can bring short-term benefits in improving website visibility, there are risks. Search engines are constantly improving their algorithms to recognize and penalize unethical techniques. Using unfair SEO practices can lead to penalties from search engines and loss of important positions in search results, which can have a negative impact on websites and business. This is why it is recommended that webmasters and marketers follow fair and ethical optimization practices (White Hat SEO) in order to build a sustainable online presence in the long term.

How can the Shape CORE platform help you with good SEO practices?

• integration with Google Search Console allows you to easily control broken links so that they do not harm your SERP (position on search engines)
• ChatGPT integration enables automatic generation of suggested SEO content (meta descriptions and descriptions) as well as general content on the web shop, such as item descriptions and page content (e.g. blogs)
• Basic SEO functionalities of the Shape CORE platform:
  • display of SEO tags (title, description and H1) depending on the item, classification...
  • editing basic SEO data of the front page (title, description)
  • separate meta title editing
  • separate meta description editing
  • separate editing of keywords
  • separate editing of canonicals
  • implementation of og, twitter and schema org metadata
  • automatic generation of XML sitemaps
• Additional SEO functionalities:
  • separate editing of H1 titles
  • automatic filling of the meta title and meta description from the title or description