
Practitioners of search engine optimization have two ways to approach it: use white hat techniques or use black hat techniques. White hat SEO techniques are considered to be the good guys while black hat SEO techniques are considered to be the bad guys. This is because black hat SEO uses shady tactics to get results.
Users of black hat SEO often cheat and manipulate website and online variables to earn money quickly. Website owners and web developers usually avoid this practice because it can lead to unfavorable results. Google's system algorithms – Penguin and Panda – for indexing websites can spot these less than legitimate techniques, which in turn could result to lower rankings or worse, getting banned from the search engine.