Search Engine Guidelines

As we have mentioned before, the white hat affiliate SEO approach that the marketer closely follows Google’s Webmaster guidelines in order to maintain and protect their website’s ranking on the search engine. By working clean, the affiliate can basically ensure that they will not run into trouble with the engine and their site’s ranking dropped.

Black hat SEO, however, knowingly goes against these guidelines and uses manipulative tactics to fool the search engine. They often use practices that Google says to avoid, so you can tell that little scares them. This method’s main focus is to raise its score on the search engine, and black hat affiliates will stop at nothing to achieve their goal.

The Target Audience

White hat SEO focuses on creating a great user experience, and its followers will continuously work towards that very goal by consistently making the needed changes to their sites. By publishing high-quality content and improving loading times on a regular basis, affiliate marketers are able to appease both their client base and the almighty search engine.

Black hat SEO does not care about its human audience. Given the practices listed below, it becomes quite clear that these affiliates are only interested in reaching the top of the results page by any means possible. The human factor becomes of value or interest only once the issue of accumulating traffic and first-time deposits (FTDs).

The latter’s methods include duplicate content rather than quality, original content, overstuffing keywords, and invisible text. These may also include redirecting users into different pages than what they are supposed to see or links to sites with irrelevant content.

Long-Term Vs. Short Term Focus

White hat and black hat affiliate SEO also differ in how fast they are looking to see results. White hat affiliates are willing to work hard and see results over time, whereas black hat affiliates are interested in seeing their ranking soar as soon as possible. Hence, the heavy use of manipulative practices against Google’s algorithms.

In defense of white hat affiliate marketing, the results may take longer to arrive, but they have a long-lasting effect. Black hat tactics work only until Google catches up with them and smites their ranking. And trust us, Google will catch up with them, eventually.

Black hat SEO’s unhealthy obsession with quick wins is ultimately undoing any affiliate site that adopts this approach. All your hard work of building a platform goes down the drain as soon as you get caught, leaving you high and dry when you could be getting paid.

The Bottom Line

You need to keep in mind that Google designs its algorithms to detect and punish sites that breach its guidelines. While it may be tempting to try and trick death (or Google’s industrious algorithms, in this case), we can assure you this is not a path that you would want to go down.

Sure, white affiliate SEO practices take longer to bring in the desired results, but they keep your website in the clear and your target audience happy. Returning clients are more likely to have higher player value, especially if you are operating a blog or similar platform.

While we cannot choose your journey for you through this harsh, dog-eat-dog industry, we hope we have managed to discourage you from using black hat SEO practices on your websites. Nobody wants to see their hard work go up in flames.