White Hat Cloaking
We all know that cloaking violates Google’s guidelines, but there is an ethical way of cloaking that google permits. When cloaking is the way to blindfold crawlers and give out irrelevant search results to users, white hat hacking is its ethical alternative. White hat cloaking or white hat SEO increases the ranking of websites without breaking the guidelines of Google. It makes your website easy to navigate, increases the chance of backlinks, and makes the work of web crawlers easy.
Read more to learn about the difference between cloaking and white hat cloaking.
What is cloaking?
When we search for something on google, some unrelated websites appear on the first page of results. Have you ever thought about the reason behind it? If you believe that it is due to an error in the web crawler or the google algorithm, no, it is not; it happens because of google cloaking. Web admins use unrelated but popular keywords on different websites to create a higher ranking for the page. The crawlers will confuse these false keywords for the real ones, and when you search for that keyword, you get a completely unrelated article.
Web admins or the people who are responsible for managing websites have guidelines to avoid such practices. According to webmaster guidelines, people creating and managing a website must provide quality content to the users. They cannot stuff websites with unrelated keywords in metadata, and invisible keywords are also prohibited. But unethical web admins use cloaking services which eventually mislead users to irrelevant pages.
If it comes to the notice of google or any other search engine that the website is cloaked, search engines will take actions based on their policy. In most cases, search engines will block the website for a fixed period or permanently.
What is white hat cloaking?
If you have heard about hacking, you might also have heard about white hat hackers; they are the people who ethically hack websites. Similarly, white hat cloaking is the process of ethically cloaking websites to help users and search engines.
They detect cookies and javascript of users to find their search pattern and deliver content based on their actions. The main goal of white hat cloaking is landing page optimization; it improves the content of websites to increase conversions.
White Hat SEO
For search engine optimization, you might have to use some cloaking tricks to satisfy google’s algorithm. In short, the harmless changes that we make on the website content to increase ranking and create quality content are called white hat SEO or Search Engine Optimization.
If you have a website or a blog, you would think about making our website reach a wider audience. Search engine optimization is the series of activities that an expert does to make your website reach an audience without compromising the quality of the content. SEO includes continuous updating of keywords, metadata, titles, and other written content; and frequent posting of content. But it is not confined to that and extends up to website optimization, bank linking, and keyword mapping.
Search engine cloaking, if done right, can make you a search engine optimization hero because the demand for your content will increase after that due to the increased traffic. The most remarkable aspect of that is, you will not have to compromise your brand reputation for that.
Possibilities of White Hat SEO
If you are still confused about cloaking SEO meaning, you will learn its possibilities better. A search engine optimized content will be easy to navigate; the crawl bots won’t face trouble finding your page when a related query comes. It will also speed up page loading of your website and thereby retaining viewers on your website.
By now, you might know how important keywords are for an article; they are the words that crawlers use to check your writing. But the problem with these keywords is that they won’t remain popular for a long time. So in white hat SEO, the experts do keyword research frequently and update them on the website to ensure that the page is still relevant. That way, an ethical search engine optimized website attracts relevant viers constantly to your website.
Another benefit of white hat search engine optimization is that the chances of backlinks are high. When someone creates an article that needs an additional link to an article with your keyword, they do a google search. That could be an article you wrote months or years back, but if it is optimized, it will appear on the first page of the search result. And articles on the first page have a significant probability of receiving backlinks, and the more the backlinks, the more will be your viewers.
Difference between Black hat and white hat SEO
Black hat SEO is the exact opposite of white hat SEO; it is unethical to optimize content to trick crawler bots. The differences between a white hat SEO and black hat SEO are as follows:
- White hat SEO focuses on the users; their primary aim is to reach suitable viewers. But black hat SEO is aiming at search engine crawlers; they are playing tricks with the bots to get a higher rank.
- White hat SEO involves a long list of processes beginning with content creation and continuous updating. These processes won’t give a sudden result, but with time, it provides a better result. But black hat SEO uses the exact opposite method; they employ specific shortcuts that give instant results. But when Google’s algorithm changes and the bots recognize it, they will have to face penalties.
Choose ethical cloaking services.
We know that it is a fast-moving world, and everyone wants instant results, but with search engine ranking, you have to be patient. Your aim of starting the website might be to get several viewers to your page and thereby increase your product sales. So, understand that unethical practices are not the solution; you might even lose your website forever. Hire a white hat SEO expert for the best long-term result.