What is the difference between white hat and grey hat SEO? Is it possible to avoid penalties from Google using grey hat SEO techniques?

Like it's name, it's kind of a "grey area." I've always looked at it as, White Hat just follows the rules as written. Sites are composed of great content based on targeted keywords that are encased in properly formatted sites with inbound links that came naturally because of the great content or, at most, some social media sharing. Grey Hat always seems to be those that are constantly trying to push the limits of what White Hat really means. These folks seem to live in that area that is the difference between the "letter of the law and the spirit of the law." These folks seem to spend more time on gaming the system than actually producing great content or doing the regular work needed to make a site great in the eyes of humans and search engines, although oddly, they're usually perfectly capable of such work. Grey Hats are those that break the basic speed law, but never driver excessively (but are still pissed at the cop when they get busted). It is possible to avoid Google penalties using Grey Hat techniques, at first, but Google and the others are getting better at catching folks all the time.  Instead, it's better just to be good at White Hat... it's less work in the long run. Good luck.

Some background music, before actually answering your question. The line between white-hat SEO and gray-hat SEO has always been vague. Some really good SEO techniques may transform from white-hat to gray-hat and even black-hat - as soon as spammers start abusing a technique. Sometimes a good cause may turn evil - if an evil mind screws it up. A great example of a white-hat technique that later turned gray-hat was the use of backlinks in widgets. This trend was on the rise back in 2007. The initiative was definitely good: you offer a valuable topic-related widget to your visitors - and they reward you with a backlink embedded in a widget. Later on, the link-bait technique was abused by spammers, so Google raised a red flag on it and strongly recommended the use a no-follow attribute in any widget links. This actually killed the idea of widget link building so webmasters cooled down a little bit when planning their link building (you'd better say link baiting). Great news came in January 2014: Google made it clear that you will trigger a red flag only if you use spammy keyword-stuffed backlinks in your widget: "Keyword-rich, hidden or low-quality links embedded in widgets that are distributed across various sites." https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/66356?hl=en That means you are now fine using backlinks in your widget unless you abuse the rules (use hidden or keyword-stuffed or unrelated anchor texts within these links). This is one of the examples when white hat might migrate to gray hat and then go back to white hat again - if you use this technique wisely and don't try to game the search engines' rules. So the answer to your question is as follows: 1. The line between white-hat SEO and gray-hat SEO is vague. 2. You CAN avoid penalties when using some techniques considered gray-hat - if you use them wisely and don't try to abuse SE rules and guidelines.

already summarized main things about white and gray hat SEO but I would like to add few more details. There is common misconception that gray hat SEO is all about forum/comment spam, link farms and keyword stunning and similar. However, if you are thinking about creating this "awesome" website and register domain name cheap-illegal-meds-from-china.com and hope that 20 articles for $5 are enough, theny you are already into gray hat area. To make matter worse, you are looking to sell affiliate products instead of your own products.  Like this wouldn't be enough, you decide to buy some links on Fiverr because you couldn't resist this awesome offer to get 100,000 links for $5. I tried to put it as gray hat as possible but everyone looking to build an affiliate website or pure Adsense website with cheap spammy articles and/or use EMD or any KW filled domain with no added value to the web is already into gray area. Google will kill your rankings sooner or later. Think about adding value to the web not your wallet and remember that there are no shortcuts.

White hat links are links with good domains, but you get into grey-hat when you pay to publish articles on good domains. Ideally, people would see your articles on your sites, like them, and post excerpts or quotes with a link back to your site - that is "natural" and completely white hat. However, many site owners and SEOs don't want to wait for the natural link-building and buy posts, presentations, videos, etc., and pay others to post those for them. Any time you pay for a link, even if it is a good article/video/presentation on a good site, it's hat is getting darker.

White Hat SEO is the most accepted and ethical route. It puts equal  consideration on search engines and human users without risking  penalties. Although it’s considerably slower than Black Hat and Gray Hat SEO, it creates long-lasting marketing assets and results. The middle-ground philosophy between Black Hat and White Hat SEO techniques. Gray Hat SEO pushes more than White Hat SEO, but not to the point where  your website will get banned (in most cases) like you often find with  Black Hat SEO. Regardless, you still need to be cautious of the employed  tactics because they may still venture into Black Hat SEO territory and  result in search engine penalties. http://www.allaahbarkat.co.in| http://www.original-airbra.in |    http://www.fairlook-cream.in