Marketing Strategies

The type of marketing to attract businesses has been informally classified using a terminology related to hats. In Western, cowboy movies, the hero usually wore white hats and the villain wore black hats. Similarly, in internet marketing terminology, different marketing styles are referred to as white, black, or gray hat marketing.

Those who follow all the rules established by the search engines are considered the good guys and their strategies are referred to as white hat marketing. A white hat marketer, for example, will use ethical search engine optimization techniques like link exchange.

Those who break the rules are regarded as bad guys and their strategies are referred to as black hat marketing. A black hat marketer, for example, will resort to unethical marketing techniques like email spam.

There is also gray hat marketing, which is the use of search engine optimization methods that are ethically questionable but have not been banned by the search engines. A gray hat marketer, for example, may exaggerate the value that consumers will get out of a product, persuading people to buy based on results that are not typical.

Other related material: The Newest Changes of Google’s Panda Algorithm

We’d like to thank Miss Sue Lang on this great article.