What is grey hat SEO?

Any SEO professional wears a number of hats according to the search engine terminology. Depending on what they are called to do by their clients, there are those who wear a white hat, those who wear a grey hat and those who wear a black hat. Confused? Well don’t be. I am going to explain the aforementioned terms as they are used in SEO. In SEO terminology, White Hat SEO means ethical SEO. It’s basically employing best practices as set out by search engines to increase ranking, credibility and visibility of your website.

Black hat SEO on the other hand, is the opposite of white hat in the sense that it entails the use of unethical practices with the aim of getting faster rankings. The practices that black hat utilizes are in violation of search engines policies and as such could lead to your website being banned or delisted. Now that we’ve shed light on white and black hat SEO, we are going to shed light on what Grey Hat SEO is and whether you should utilize it or not.

What is grey hat SEO?

Grey Hat SEO is a perfect mean of the two extremes between white hat and black hat SEO. It basically refers to a combination of black and white hat strategies with the aim of making a website seem natural and thereby increasing its web rankings and visibility. It’s a strategy that SEO professionals use to bring up the ranking of a website without jeopardizing its well-being. If an SEO professional doesn’t know what he or she is doing with grey hat SEO strategy, it could backfire and dangerously harm your website and its ranking. Without further ado, let’s take a look at various Grey Hat SEO strategies.

Article spinning

Also deemed a Black Hat technique, article spinning refers to creation of content optimized with certain keywords and thereafter creating variations of it with the help of software. The idea is to rewrite or reproduce the same piece of content multiple times so long as is it does not appear plagiarized with the aim of improving a website’s profile. While this technique currently works to some extent, the same cannot be promised in the near future especially with the numerous updates on Google Panda.

Link purchasing

If you are contemplating to purchase or buy links, I advise you not to. If Google gets wind of it, your website will be penalized and will fall down the ranks of Google. The penalty can make all the investments you’ve made in your website go down the drain. The best course of action would be to list your website on relevant high authority sites as opposed to resorting to buying links or exchanging links, which is also called link building.

Cloaking

This is a grey hat as well as black hat technique whereby a searcher gets a different result contrary to what the search engines see. Once you click on a certain link, you are redirected to another webpage that is of use to the owner of a particular website. While this technique is mostly considered a black hat technique, the jury is still out there.

Buying old domains

This is a technique employed by individuals who would rather buy an aged domain than create a brand new website with the hope of ranking faster. The idea is basically to buy an old domain that already has a good profile or PR with the aim of getting higher rankings without having to go through the hassle of systematically creating a website from scratch.

In conclusion, in online marketing,  it is important to note that Grey Hat SEO techniques are not as straightforward as black and white hat techniques. Therefore, this means that implementing grey hat strategies can be a little difficult and therefore require a person who is qualified enough and understands the strategy very well. However, to be on the safe side, always aspire to utilize ethical practices to achieve higher ranking and visibility for your website.