A Visual Guide to the Hats of SEO

A quick tour of the different types of search engine optimization.

March 19, 2010 at 11:30AM by Brian Clark Howard | comment

The other day in the office we were joking around about the different "hat colors" for SEOs (search engine optimizers)--you know, black hat, white hat and so on, for the efforts people make to get pages to rank highly on Google and other engines. I mentioned it to my buddy Arch Carey, who is a talented iPhone sketch artist. (He's the guy behind OM-NOM-NOMNITURE.)

We got to thinking, what would the various SEO hats actually look like? Here's what we came up with, thanks to great suggestions from the rest of The Daily Green team:

Black Hat SEO

The dark ninjas of the net, black hat SEOs try to trick search engines into ranking their sites higher by any means necessary. They often hawk scams and dubious products, and engage in such Google-banned practices as link farming, page hijacking, cloaking, keyword stuffing, link buying, spamming and other evil arts that clog up the Intertubes and give legit SEOs a bad name.

White Hat SEO

White hats worship at the altar of Google, and follow the TOCs (terms of service) of search engines to the letter. Unconcerned with "gaming" rankings, instead they focus on trying to lay out everything as clearly and transparently as possible.

Gray Hat SEO

Gray Hats avoid the activities that are expressly banned by search engines and by the Internet community. But they aren't above trying to aggressively outrank the competition through link building, use of social media, smart use of RSS and building partnerships with other sites.

Pirate Hat SEO

Those "bloggers" who engage in egregious linkjacking, or who Shangai other people's content in other ways. And those who post anything on Talk Like a Pirate Day.

Top Hat SEO

Those who achieve the coveted first place ranking in search engines.

Bacon Hat SEO

Net denizens who are obsessed with bacon, burgers as big as Volkswagens and Turducken, and building sites around these clickbait themes. Example: The Bacon Queen

Cat Hat SEO

Not to be confused with Dr. Seuss, cat hats are all about exploiting the Internet's obsession with keyboard-playing cats, sneezing pandas and maybe even skateboarding dogs. Don't let the cuddly cuteness fool you, they're pure evil incarnate.