In more detail
The phrase borrows from old western films, where villains wore black hats. "White-hat" SEO follows search engine guidelines; "grey-hat" describes tactics in between. Google doesn't use these labels, but it publishes detailed spam policies describing what it considers manipulation. These include:
- Cloaking: showing search engines different content from what users see
- Doorway abuse: many pages created to rank for similar searches that funnel users to one destination
- Hidden text and links, and keyword stuffing
- Link spam: buying or selling links that pass ranking credit, and link schemes
- Scaled content abuse: generating large numbers of pages mainly to manipulate rankings, however they are produced
- Site reputation abuse: third-party pages published on a host site mainly to exploit its ranking signals
- Expired domain abuse: buying expired domains to host low-value content
Google enforces these policies with automated systems and human reviewers. Violations can result in lower rankings or a manual action shown in Search Console. Google tightened several of these policies in March 2024, as described on its Search Central blog.
Why it matters when hiring an agency
You are responsible for what is done to your site. Google's hiring advice says so directly: "Ultimately, you are responsible for the actions of any companies you hire." Black-hat tactics are often what lie behind ranking guarantees and unusually cheap packages.
Ask agencies whether they follow Google Search Essentials, how they build links and how they produce content at scale. If the answers are vague, or rely on private networks or "secret methods", look elsewhere. Our guide on spotting fake SEO guarantees covers the warning signs.