I was reading an article about “black hat” SEO today and it got me thinking about the term. What is black hat SEO you ask? It’s all the stuff that gives legitimate SEO a bad name: cloaking, keyword stuffing, doorways, etc. It’s the stuff that can certainly give you a quick, momentary boost in search ranking… right before you get booted out of the index for violating usage guidelines. ‘Cause while there’s nothing technically illegal about black hat SEO, it is against the search engine’s rules… and they’ll kick you to the curb for doing this stuff.

So why do we associate all of these unethical, shady practices into the whole of SEO? Why are we calling these techniques “black hat” SEO and legitimate, ethical practices “white hat” SEO? By linking the two we’re creating an association between them that I’m sure most of us wish didn’t exist. Even though we know the difference, does your next client? Does the next person you run into at a convention know the difference when you tell them you’re an SEO?

Search engine optimization is done to make websites more visible, easy to understand, and focused in the eyes of the search engine. Boiled down to its finer bits, the things that make up “black hat” SEO are really gaming and scheming techniques. Each of the practices commonly lumped together under the black hat moniker is designed to trick, fool, or otherwise game search engine algorithms. So why don’t we just call these practices what they are: search engine gaming, or SEG.

Why bother with a distinction? There’s a psychological link made each time someone hears the term SEO. Even if they’re familiar with the industry enough to know that “black hat” and “white hat” SEOs exists, they may be left wondering which type you are. By creating a clear distinction we can begin to better educate people on what SEO really is and what it isn’t.

Will black hat SEOs claim their SEG ways? Probably not. They’ll probably still refer to themselves as SEOs. But if we, as an industry, make the distinction we can use educational opportunities to teach businesses and individuals the difference between the two… so that they can decide for themselves whether the practices their “SEO” company is using really qualifies as search engine optimization.

Sure… this is mostly psychological and/or technical. But you don’t see the term “law enforcement” being thrown around to describe police offers AND bounty hunters. You don’t see the term “tax specialist” used to describe accountants and tax evaders. Why?

Because that psychological and/or technical difference is important.