What’s the difference between black hat and white hat link building strategies?

Google Panda (February 2011) and Google Penguin (April 2012) saw changes to Google’s algorithms that marked the beginning of the end of black hat link building strategies. By this, we mean tactics such as:

1. Cloaking : hidden text on your website that can’t be seen by visitors but can be seen by search engines.

2. Hiding links on websites you don’t own by using a gap in security.

3. Buying links to your website.

4. Adding your link to the Comments sections of numerous external blogs.

Although some companies still use black hat tactics – or some grey hat tactics that push the boundaries of what’s acceptable – this approach tends to deliver short-term gains and comes with substantial risk. 

In a blog at the end of 2015, Monitor Backlinks identified 18 types of backlinks that risk violating Google’s guidelines:

• Link exchanges

• Blogging networks

• Widget backlinks

• Advertorials

• Paid links that pass PageRank

• Article directories

• Hacking and hiding links in CSS and JavaScript

• Site-wide and footer backlinks

• Low distribution of anchor text/repeating the same keywords in anchor text

• Backlinks from foreign language websites

• Low quality guest posting

• Automatically generated backlinks

• Low quality web directories

• Bookmark websites

• Irrelevant backlinks

• Backlinks from websites with duplicated and spinned content

• Low quality backlinks from forum signatures, Wiki pages and free directories

• Any link intended to manipulate PageRank

White hat link building strategies, on the other hand, are preferable for anyone interested in long-term SEO success.