SEO Ethics - Pushing Boundaries and Various Coloured Hats...

As strange as it may seem ethics, morals and principles are associated to various coloured hats within the SEO world. We wear our hats like hearts on sleeves. As characters, our hats define us but they do not box us. For example, a 'white hat' may believe this is the best possible approach but could also respect and admire the innovation and techniques of their deadly rivals the 'black hats'.

To quote Salt n Pepa "push it good, p-push it real good" I hear you sisters, but how do you feel about pushing the boundaries?

The discussion of morals, principles and ethics within the SEO world is comparable to a heated discussion concerning religion or politics: there will always be more than two perspectives and therefore two sides. Both of which are strongly opinionated and could sell you 'their way' faster than a fat kid eating cake.

In order to gain a better understanding, we need to obtain a clearer insight into what colour the hats are and what they believe in. Practitioners within the search industry are divided into three camps. There are the "white hats," their polar opposites "black hats" and the hybrid outfit the "grey hats", who use a combination of ideas and techniques whilst hiding under the comfort and safety of the white hat blanket.

 "Do you wana be in my gang, my gang, my gang; do you wana be in my gang, Oh yeah?"

Coloured hats and their beliefs:
 
White hat SEO generally means using traditional and accepted optimisation techniques and thoroughly avoiding and thinking about using practices like cloaking, which made their distant cousins 'black hats' infamous.

Being part of the white hat SEO group you will typically use standard best practices, focusing on optimising a website for the end user but with the search engines in mind.  The content displayed will be the same content the search engines will see, the pages that rank will direct visitors to originally intended page; you will have nothing to hide.
 
Although this sounds like an astrology reading, white hats will have patience and strive to achieve a top ranking position naturally.  They will place a strong emphasis on writing engaging on-page copy, with well placed keywords and use above board techniques when link building believing (sometimes blindly) that Google will smile upon them if they do so.   
 
Black hat SEO Black hat SEO Black hat SEO (I am not keyword stuffing I promise) usually means employing ranking techniques that are clearly outside of Google's stated Webmaster Guidelines.  Black Hats will focus on optimising a website for the search engine with the end user in mind. Although it is not right to box them the majority will aim only to obtain high search engine ranking positions; many would say in an unethical manner as they breaks search engine rules and regulations and can create a poor user experience.  One defining trait of a Black Hat is that they continually look for loopholes in the algorithms of search engines; some could call them pioneers.  The one public example of how Black hat techniques can be detrimental to a brand is the BMW case where they were banned from Google for using a practise coined 'cloaking'.

Methods used to achieve higher search rankings include cloaking, hidden text, keyword stuffing, and intensively cross linked sites.
 
Grey hat SEO lies somewhere in the middle, they have no real territory, no allegiance and exist on the realms of both worlds. The concept of Grey hat SEO is much more difficult to define as techniques which fall into this category are subjective and could be argued to fall into either black hat or white hat.  Although Grey Hats are based within the walls of the white hat territory, agreeing with most of their principles, they just can't help themselves so they often peer out of their windows or go out across the street and snoop around, like a nosey neighbour.

A lot of Grey hats admire Black hats and push the boundaries by employing some of their techniques but toned down and reapplied with the end user in mind.
 
Anakin Skywalker would be the pin up boy of this gang, just before turning evil of course.
   
Deep Breath...

Some people feel that ethics, principles and morals are the equivalent of excess baggage which can't fit into the hand luggage, easily dismissed and forgettable on the trip to number 1, in the sunny, quaint village of Google.  Others would feel that ethics should be adhered to and are central to their way of life.

The benefits of black hat techniques are often short lived and like the laws of gravity, whatever goes up in an unethical way through using Black Hat must also come down - thanks Mr Newton.
 
Black hats seem willing to sacrifice the experience of the end user as their ambition to get the desired number one spot blurs their vision, losing focus on what's really important, the customer.  Client consideration must also feature in the discussion; it is immoral and dishonest to work on clients behalf using these techniques. I would never do this as in the long term they often turn out to be detrimental to a website.
 
The Streets sung "let's push things forward" and personally I view the black hats with respect and admiration.  They are integral to this industry being as dynamic as it is and their techniques inspire others to continue thinking of new practises. Some of their ideas get filtered and form the basis of techniques within the grey hat SEO World, who combine their original function with more focus of the end user.

SEO techniques and practises are not a science; they were and continue to be created out of trial and error and a lot of experimentation, knowing this, where do you stand on pushing the boundaries of SEO Ethics?