Black Hat, White Hat... Gray Hat?
Author: Ricardo D Argence

Internet marketers and the ongoing struggle to make money
online. There are more and more people going on the Internet to
seek their fortunes.

It is almost like the old "Gold rush days" of California. I am
sure we all remember those days. You do not need anything more
than a computer and a connection to the Internet to become a
Internet marketer.

The promise of being your own boss and making a lucrative
income awaits everyone willing to give it a try.

There are a few things that Internet marketers need to know in
order to begin their new careers. If you sell anything on the
Internet, you will probably have a website.

Visitors to your site are considered traffic. You must generate
a lot of traffic to covert the visitors into actual sales. This
is where SEO enters into the picture.

SEO is all about search engine optimization. People on the
Internet will find you through the major search engines when
they use keyword searches to find the information they are
looking for.

Your website, forum posts, articles, etc. should be using SEO
so the search engines can index your website and then rank it so
it can be found correctly when people use the search engines to
find relevant information.

For a while now, there is a battle going on within the Internet
among marketers that use SEO. Black Hat SEO is to use optimizing
practices to fool the search engines and the use of other
traffic generating techniques that are questionable or
unethical.

Generally stated, the Black Hat SEO techniques are used to fool
the search engines into believing a website is very relevant to
the keywords searches when in fact the promotional site may only
be a blatant sales tactic.

White Hat SEO is the opposite of Black Hat practices. The White
Hat SEO marketers play by the rules. They want their sites to be
relevant and fair, offering solid information on their sites.

White Hat SEO individuals count on the sale of their products
or services after real trust has been established first.

There is now a lot of gray area in-between the black and the
white because nothing is really black and white. Remember the
first time you began to play in your new sandbox? Someone
probably told you not to get dirt mixed in with the sand. How
long did it take before the sandbox began turning a shade of
gray?

Call them the Gray Hat SEO practitioners. Today, there are
many. White Hat SEO requires a lot of patience, without any
solid traffic coming into your promotional website for some
time. For someone new in the marketing game, asking them to be
very patient for traffic is a lot to ask.

The competition for traffic is very tight. It is not easy
trying to make a dollar and stay within the White Hat rules of
engagement. The lure of certain questionable methods in order to
gain more exposure will sometimes be employed.

Admittedly, the lines between white and black can easily become
blurred. When there are questionable traffic generating
techniques available to use that get results, then quite often,
some of these methods will be adopted as marketing tools.

The search engines want everyone to employ White Hat SEO so
their visitors can find relevant information on what they are
searching for. This is why they are called "search engines".

With more marketers fighting for exposure, questionable SEO
tactics will always be used by some. In the end, it will be up
to the Internet marketer to find it within them to monitor
themselves, play by the rules and learn as much as they can
about proper SEO methods.


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