The Good, the Bad, & the Ugly of Link Building – Beginner’s Guide to Link Building moz.com

When it comes to link building, the results and strategies can often be categorized into “white-hat”, “black-hat”, and “gray-hat”. What exactly do these terms mean?

White-hat methods are basically “law-abiding” and follow recommendations by leading search operators like Google. Often these are long-term strategies which include:

• Generating unique and thoughtful content
• Establishing a bona fide community that you are involved in
• Promoting your website to pertinent people in a personal way

Black-hat strategies, on the other hand, violate guidelines for quick results. This often does not pan out well, as webmasters are always looking to shut down such activities. Negative examples include:

• Cloaking – displaying information on search that is not what users will actually find on your site
• Hidden text with keywords that is invisible to visitors
• Buying links

Gray-hat strategies are not directly in violation of rules but are also not the healthiest way of building links. Carelessly trading links without fully examining quality and relevance, for example. Eventually, your site can get devalued in search.

Check out the article to better understand what penalties can be doled out and real-life examples of this happening.

It’s time to take a look at how you might be developing your SEO strategy and stay in the white!