Here’s a sideways, fun look at White Hat and Black Hat symbolism, as used in the world of search engine optimisation and Hollywood B-Movie Westerns.
Jargon works in two ways: to help give a group an identity, make them special, separate them from the masses via use of language; and as a legitimate tool to explain economically what something means, especially something new. Sometimes it is not clear how terms originate or who first coined particular phrases before they become part of subculture, culture and industry.
Take the terms White Hat and Black Hat, for example. There are several meanings that can be derived from the terms but they all lead back to the same place: cowboys and the wild frontier.
A frontier is the edge of populated land, where the known, the safe and the familiar meet the strange, frightening and lawless. In such lands, where anything can happen, it helps to have very simple indicators to help you know who to trust and who makes you dig your spurs into your horse’s flanks and giddy-on-up in the opposite direction.
Culture, as ever, draws upon what it already knows, and films (movies) have influenced language with its symbolism, just as oil paintings and theatre had done before. In the West, certainly, it is tradition in films that the guy wearing a white hat is a goodie, while the one in the black hat is a villainous troublemaker intent on getting what he wants by any means.
Hence we have the modern origins of White Hat and Black Hat descriptions of SEO practices, rooted in popular culture B-Movie Westerns from the early part of the 20th century. But unlike the Lone Ranger, who always fought the bad guys in black hats and won, White Hat SEOs are not policing the nefarious practices of the Black Hat SEOs, they are forging ahead into the unknown and exciting realms of world wide web alongside them, gaining ground using only ethical means.
It’s a common theme in Westerns that the good guy has to struggle harder to get the girl, save the town, find the treasure, build the church, provide for his family, while the bad guy seems to effortlessly get what he wants, no matter who or what stands in his way. Bad guys are poison for these new communities struggling to thrive in the frontier lands, stealing money and cattle, killing the men folk, harassing the womenfolk, disrespecting law and order. Sometimes they have small – and dramatic – wins; but the white hats prevail at the end of the film.
Parallels can be drawn with White Hat SEO: ethical practices are sustainable in the long term, bolster good company reputations and have a long term positive impact on profits; they also raise the quality benchmark of the entire community. Conversely, Black Hats pollute the user experience, degrade reputations and, while clients might experience brief spikes in profit, these cannot be sustained.
Black and white is how we like to see things. In reality, we know that, aside from Mother Theresa, the Dalai Lama and possibly Nelson Mandela, most of us probably fall into a shades-of-grey-hat area. But black and white is how we best understand things, and when it comes to SEO then good and bad have been categorically defined – by Google.
Coming next – Part 2: Google is the sheriff!
