As quoted from a recent WebProNews articles on Matt Cutts’ predictions for SEO in 2009, Matt says of Black Hat SEO methods:

“Black Hat SEO is getting a little more malicious. In a world where Black Hat is moving towards really illegal things as an SEO you have to decide your risk tolerance and do I really want to try to compete with people who are doing illegal stuff or do I want to make a long term site that’s gonna stand the test of time.”

If you are new to the search engine optimization game, this quote will beg the question, what is meant by Black Hat SEO? As with most businesses, there are two general ways to obtain success. A solid company will use reputable strategies and a strong work ethic to see results, whereas a business owner of more dubious morals may try some underhanded tactics to get a leg up on the competition. So it has been with SEO for over a decade.

Black Hat SEO is so named for the “black hat” traditionally worn by the villain in old westerns and gangster movies. The bad guy was always easy to spot by his hat. On the opposite side, White Hat SEO implies proper and ethical techniques for building traffic – the sort of optimization a company would want to hire out for the sake of maintaining the good graces of major search engines. Occasionally you may see references to Gray Hat SEO, where a company applying primarily White Hat tactics may once in a while dip into a “shady” gray area for a boost in rankings.

Knowing these definitions, the SEO novice may wonder what exactly are the methods that qualify for Black Hat, and how well do they work. In short, if you apply these quick fixes to a website you may see an improvement in referrals, though your victory may be brief. As the politics of search optimization become more refined and scrutinized by major engines and portals, these questionable practices are becoming easier to spot. Engines like Google and Yahoo, in turn, are wiser to tricks, and any site guilty of wearing a black hat may not only be overlooked during a crawl, but may also be punished in search results.

Examples of Black Hat tactics may include:

Keyword Stuffing – How often does a particular keyword appear in your site’s content? Is the content written as such so that paragraphs have little flow, and basically amount to a laundry list of key phrases under which you hope to be found? Engine crawlers have become more savvy in determining which sites are rich with relevant, concise text rather than repeated slogans filling a page.

Hidden Text – Say the basic background of your website is white. You want to be found in search under the term “baseball cards”, so you plaster multiple instances of the phrase on your site, in white so it blends. Good idea? No. Hidden text is merely a different form of keyword stuffing and can get you into trouble with search engines.

Doorway Pages – These days engines look for web pages with content. A doorway page doesn’t necessary fit this description. Doorway pages are designed primarily to be optimized for a specific search phrase, yet offer little relevant content in return for the high ranking. The idea is to land the visitor, who will hopefully click on to the actual website to learn more, thus creating an entrance, or “doorway” for the site. This is a highly discouraged practice that could land a company in hot water with the major engines if used.

Example of White Hat SEO may include:

Proper Use of META Data: Your keywords and descriptions stick to the page topic. Your title tags are keyword rich without appearing stuffed. You don’t have too many refresh tags leading users from doorway pages.

Balanced Text and Links: Your site content contains a good balance of prime keywords, and you haven’t highlighted every single one to lead somewhere else. Your content doesn’t stray off topic and is concise and to the point. Your images use the proper ALT tags as does the anchored text.

Good Link Popularity: Your site is trustworthy enough to encourage inbound linking. People visit your site and know you have a solid presence and don’t mind linking back. You have established a reputation with your site that is stellar.

So when does the line between black and white blur? How do you know if what you are doing will help or hurt your site’s rankings? Often times, SEO is an intuitive process, where one lets his consicence guide him to properly optimizing pages. If you feel something you are doing could penalize you, it would be wise to try another tack.

Above all else, continue to research SEO and learn how it can work for you and your site’s success.