What is white hat and black hat SEO?

In simple terms, “white hat” SEO is gaining rankings through ethical strategy, which means it strictly stays within the guidelines established by Google and other search engines and essentially builds upon an excellent user experience while “black hat” SEO leans towards the strategies, tricks and linking schemes that fall outside those guidelines.

Black hat SEO often results in temporary high rankings because the tricks can work for the moment but will often be uncovered and can result in penalties or a complete ban from the search results.