What is White Hat, Black Hat and Gray Hat SEO

As with the name you can assume that black hap means not fair, white hat mean fair while gray hat mean something situation in between fair and unfair, might be you can think that from where these terms came, actually these terms came from film industry or theater where hero and villain identified by their hat, I think no need to tell you that who used which type of hat obviously hero wore white hat while other one is other one hat.

Now the second question would be your that what is association of white hat with SEO, so here the practices we do as per the Google's guidelines come under white hat while those practices are not allowed by Google came in black hat, so further question will be..what are the Guidelines of Google, here are a glimpse of those

Google’s Guidelines

Google explained quite clear webmaster's guidelines that are used by worldwide SEO professionals to identify what could land a website for ranking.

Google calls our attention to the “Quality guidelines”, those that denote “the most common forms of deceptive or manipulative behavior” over the web-pages.

In these guidelines, we can see name of some activities like “cloaking”, “doorway pages”, and “scraped content”.

The guidelines directly relate to the changes in Google’s algorithms over the years.

Penguin, Panda and Payday all included measures to lessen the presence of websites in the SERPs that don’t follow the guidelines.

What is the difference Between Black Hat & White Hat SEO
The basic difference between the black hat and white hat SEO is whether you are working in the spirit of the search engines’ guidelines.

There may be nuances to the guidelines that you find unclear, but are you working to meet the guidelines or get around them?

What is Gray Hat SEO?
As with a lot of SEO, there are differing opinions on what gray hat SEO is.

Take the first page of Google’s results on “what is gray hat SEO” and you’ll see articles with a mixture of definitions, broadly falling into the categories of:

• It’s a mixture of white hat and black hat techniques.
• It’s a tactic that is currently either white or black hat but with changes to the ways search engines work could become the opposite in the future.
• Both of these definitions have a commonality.

1. Gray hat SEO is neither black hat nor white hat, but something in the middle.
2. Either transitioning between the two, or a mixture of the two.
3. It’s a blurred line.
4. Not something that you would willingly inform Google you are doing.
5. Not something you should automatically be penalized for.
6. It’s not necessarily a bad practice, but it is being done with the intention to get ahead in the rankings.

Why Do These Definitions Matter?
Essentially, the use of white, black, and gray hat terminology is arbitrary.

Black hat techniques, ones that deliberately go against the search engine guidelines, carry risks.

As such, websites that go against the guidelines could be penalized by an outright, or partial ban from the search engine.

That’s very serious if the website isn’t your own.

You may cause a business to lose its largest source of income if it can no longer be found through its main organic source.

In the absence of a governing body, clients of SEO pros do not have much to go off, except:

“Do you use only white hat techniques?”

A question I’ve heard prospective clients ask. "What are some activities you could place in the black, white, and gray hat categories?"

Link Building
Google’s Webmaster Guidelines state:

White Hat
Creating content of value to users with the goal of educating, informing or delighting them. Just so happens that the content is so good that other sites want to link to it as a resource.

Black Hat
Private blog networks (PBNs), adding your website link to any blog comment you can, and paying for links. These all clearly go against Google and Bing’s webmaster guidelines.

Gray Hat

Creating content purely for the sake of gaining links could be considered against Google’s guidelines by the definition given above.