Well if you’ve imagined the good cowboy in the white hat and the bad one in the black, you can be forgiven–that’s certainly the impression people try to give off about the whole deal. But what is black hat SEO, anyway? Is it legal? Does it work?

And what is white hat SEO? Does it have too soft a touch? And, again most importantly, does it work?

The line between black and white hat search engine optimization is sometime a little blurry–in no small part because techniques once considered white hat may not be any longer. Some people will tell you that white hat SEO is ethical while black hat SEO is not. And while there certainly are unethical practices used by some who wear the darker hats, this is a bit of an over simplification.

A general rule of thumb is whether Google likes the practice or not. In its constant effort to return search results it says are relevant, the search company continually updates its search algorithms. Typically, anything that works, but that Google will penalize or ban you for, if found out, is considered black hat.

Why would anyone use black hat techniques, then? For one thing, these techniques can give a page an unduly high ranking, often in a short amount of time. Sure, Google will eventually come down on the page or site, but in the meantime, its owner is making big bucks. At least, that’s the theory.

So if the big bucks are in black hat, why use white hat? “What hat” search engine optimization techniques tend to last longer, for one thing. They may require more work on the front-end, and usually require a little bit of upkeep, but in the long term they bring in traffic (and, if you’re selling/pre-selling right, money). Not only will you have more consistent sales with that one site, but you’ll also have time, once you’re done setting it up, to build another site that could give you long-term, relatively passive income.

With black hat techniques, you’re likely to be making new site after new site after new site.

Another reason to go white hat is for branding purposes. You really don’t want to build your site’s popularity and rankings high using black-hat techniques, only to get your site banned for life by Google when it finds out what you’re doing–which it will, eventually. Being known as a black-hatter is also likely to brand you as a pretty shady fellow, not something you really want in the internet marketing world.

The line between black and white hat search engine optimization is sometimes a little unclear, and sometimes moves around when search engines update their algorithms. If you’re in IM for the long-haul, though, it’s worth keeping up with what is considered white-hat, and sticking to it.

Shared hosting is what most webhosts offer, unless they specify that you are getting your own server or VPS assume that you are getting a shared hosting plan. Shared hosting is exactly what it sounds like, a whole bunch of websites available on the same server, all using the same resources and using just a few different IP addresses amongst them. Many new businesses and people who are starting up personal web pages decide to use shared hosting to cut their expenses, the amount of money that can be saved this way can be significant and the whole process is very easy to use, but what are the costs?

Bad Neighborhood

Your shared hosting account is on a server with a whole bunch of other sites, they may contain content you don’t personally agree with on moral or ethical grounds, or just content that you don’t want associated with your business. People can find out what sites are coming from what servers, and you may be tarred with the same brush. Worse still the other sites may be running malicious scripts and your site could be banned from being accessed, from sending mail or any of a hundred other things that are totally beyond your control.

Greedy Neighbors

Your site will be running on a server getting requests for these other websites, if it turns out that one of them ends up being really popular and gets lots of traffic all at once, your site’s performance will suffer, and if your site’s performance suffers, your users will not be happy. It doesn’t even take a hugely popular site on your server to mess things up, poorly written scripts can eat server resources and leave your site responding slowly or not at all.

Big Fish, Small Pond

Shared hosting will restrict the availability of services, applications and technologies available to you, in addition to often having smaller bandwidth limits than VPS or Dedicated Server hosting plans. This means as your success grows and your website tries to grow with it you may run into serious issues, and the process of transferring a site out of shared hosting and into a VPS is not trivial.

VPS to the rescue! (maybe)

VPS solutions are not perfect, but they do provide many advantages over a conventional Shared Hosting option. If your website represents your business, it is good for your professional image that that website is available as often as possible, and that it responds in a timely manner and is not associated with sites containing illicit or explicit content. VPS Hosting gives you more control, more power, more reliability.

Your website is the online extension of your business, what does your hosting choice say about your company?