As with all things, there is black and white. Within SEO, some providers market themselves as white SEO. This means that they are “clean” and ethical, and do not engage in practices that falsely represent page ranks higher than they deserve.

In the past, you will be surprised to know that paid links were once considered white SEO tactics, until Google outlawed it. White hat SEO includes link building and other activities that does drives traffic by plain vanilla link building, keyword research and using Google’s search engine functions.

Black hat SEO typically entails a cat and mouse strategy with Google, and can generate an enormous amount of benefit if executed right. Both strategies in actually do not conflict with one another, and they co-exist within Google’s guidelines. Many SEO executives uses Black hat SEO tactics, which can be shorter term in nature. This is the Churn and Burn strategy whereby, a website is created, monetized and then penalized. While this practice is sometimes labeled as a failure, it can also be highly effective in creating a short term interest boost.

While the ethical struggle between white and black SEO continues, the actual line is seemingly more blurry than first thought. It should be viewed upon as a moral dilemma, but rather a business strategy approach that can be used for different purposes.