In general all of the methods or tactics of carrying out search engine optimization can be categorized under two names. They are "white hat" and "black hat".

White Hat - All the methods and tactics of carrying out search engine optimization are regarded as "white hat" if they are in accordance with the guidelines of the search engines and do not include any deception or trickery. It is important to note, as the guidelines on any search engine are not written anywhere in the form of rules or commands. Apart from conforming to the guidelines, using "white hat" methods also means that the content which is indexed and ranked by the search engine is exactly same to what a user will see when they visit the same web page.

Black Hat - These are the SEO methods for improving the rankings in the search engines that are condemned by the search engines and these methods also involve trickery. These methods include practices such as "hiding" the text either by making it colored similar to the background or by making it invisible, getting the users redirected on to a page which is different to the one provided to the search engines. In general the method or tactic that resulted in redirecting a visitor to a page which is different to the one which the search engine has ranked is termed as "black hat". One such popular practice is "cloaking" in which one version of the page is provided to the search engines and the visitors get an entirely different version of the same web page.

Search engines can reduce the ranking of the site in its search results or altogether eliminate the name of the website from its listings if it discovers that the site is using "black hat" SEO methods in order to deceive them and the public. Therefore it is generally recommended not to use the "black hat" methods. Such penalties can be imposed either by the search engines by manually reviewing the website or can be imposed automatically by their algorithms.

There is one very popular example that took place in February 2006 when Google removed the BMW Germany and RICOH Germany websites from their search results due to both of them using "black hat" SEO methods in order to improve their site's ranking in the search results. However Google restored their pages in its results when both these companies apologized for deceiving Google and made the required changes.

Submit your websites to one of Bruce's Strong Bidding Web Directory for strong back links and read more SEO related articles from the author at Internet marketing and SEO blog