White hat vs grey hat vs black hat SEO

What is white, grey and black hat SEO?

White hat, grey hat and black hat SEO are labels for how a tactic relates to search engines’ rules. White hat SEO follows Google’s guidelines. Black hat SEO breaks its spam policies to manipulate rankings. Grey hat SEO is not clearly banned but sits close to the line and can become spam when overdone.

White hat SEO is the normal work of making a site useful and easy to understand: content that answers the query, a sound technical setup, and links earned because the page deserves them. Nothing about it needs hiding from a Google reviewer, a client or a journalist.

Black hat SEO is any tactic that breaks Google’s spam policies: buying followed links, cloaking, hidden text, keyword stuffing, mass-produced pages, renting space on strong sites, hacking. It aims at the ranking system, not the reader, and it usually depends on Google not noticing.

Grey hat SEO is the large middle: guest posts written partly for links, link exchanges, niche edits, redirecting expired domains, clickbait titles. Each has a legitimate version and a spam version. The difference is usually scale, payment and purpose.

Why white, grey and black hat SEO matters

The three differ on four things. Intent: white hat aims at users, black hat at the algorithm, grey hat at both. Disclosure: white hat has nothing to hide, black hat depends on hiding (unlabelled payments, content only Google sees), grey hat often keeps quiet about why something was done. Risk: white hat carries none from Google, black hat risks a manual action or algorithmic demotion, grey hat risks those once it becomes a pattern. Durability: white hat results tend to survive updates, black hat gains disappear when caught, grey hat gains are uncertain.

The line also moves. In March 2024 Google added policies on scaled content abuse, site reputation abuse and expired domain abuse, turning tactics many people called grey into named violations. A tactic that is grey today can be black next year, which is a good reason to stay well inside the line rather than on it.

Knowing the labels helps when you hire. If an agency’s plan relies on buying links or publishing hundreds of near-identical pages, it is selling black hat work, whatever it calls it.

How to tell white, grey and black hat apart

1. Would you do it if search engines did not exist? If the tactic only makes sense for rankings, it is at least grey.
2. Does it pay for links? Money, goods, services or free products given for a followed link make it a paid link, which is black hat unless the link carries rel="sponsored" or rel="nofollow".
3. Does it show users and Google different things? Cloaking, hidden text and sneaky redirects are black hat by definition.
4. Would you be comfortable showing it to a Google reviewer, a client or a competitor? If it depends on nobody looking closely, it is black hat.
5. Is it a one-off or a pattern? One reciprocal link with a partner is normal. Hundreds of swapped links, guest posts or templated pages are a scheme.
6. Does it add value of its own? Pages that copy, spin or mass-produce content without adding anything break the scraping and scaled content policies.
7. Does it use someone else’s site or reputation? Hosting third-party pages to borrow a site’s ranking power, or planting content without permission, is black hat.

White, grey and black hat SEO example

Writing a guide that answers the query — white hat

Fixing broken links, slow pages and crawl errors — white hat

Pitching original data to journalists for coverage (digital PR) — white hat

Asking a site that mentions you to add a link — white hat

A paid placement marked rel="sponsored" — white hat

Writing a guest post for a relevant site’s readers — white hat to grey hat

A guest post written mainly for a keyword-rich link — grey hat

Swapping links with a partner site — grey hat (link exchange)

Asking a site to add your link to an old article — grey hat (niche edit)

Redirecting a relevant expired domain to your site — grey hat

A headline that oversells the page — grey hat (clickbait)

Buying a link on a niche blog — black hat (paid link)

Running a network of sites to link to yourself — black hat (PBN)

Repeating a keyword dozens of times on a page — black hat (keyword stuffing)

White text on a white background — black hat (hidden text)

Showing Googlebot a different page from users — black hat (cloaking)

Hundreds of near-identical city pages — black hat (doorway pages)

Publishing thousands of unedited AI pages for search traffic — black hat (scaled content abuse)

Renting a section of a news site for coupon pages — black hat (site reputation abuse)

Buying or incentivising fake reviews — black hat (fake reviews)