The emergence of search engines gave rise to the profession of SEO. By optimizing a website’s article content, code, external links, and internal links, websites can achieve better rankings on Baidu search. Higher rankings mean more traffic, which in turn generates revenue for the site through a certain conversion rate.

This was the original purpose of SEO. However, as people continued to study search engine algorithms, they discovered that certain techniques could better cater to search engines and continuously boost website rankings. Meanwhile, Baidu has been evolving as well, with various algorithms pushing search engines toward greater intelligence and user-friendliness.

As a result, some websites that quickly rose to the top using black-hat SEO may be instantly deindexed or permanently penalized by a single Baidu algorithm update. This is the disadvantage of black-hat SEO — you never know when your website will lose its rankings on Baidu entirely.

Therefore, if you want a website to operate healthily and sustainably in the long run, using white-hat SEO methods is the best strategy. White-hat SEO is like value investing in the stock market: obvious effects may not be visible in the short term. But over time, as content depth expands, content quality improves, website structure becomes more polished, and user experience keeps getting better, quantitative change will eventually lead to qualitative change. White-hat SEO is precisely a process from accumulation to breakthrough.

Virtually all legitimate large-scale websites are built using white-hat SEO, which is why they have grown steadily over the years. Even as Baidu’s algorithms update constantly, these white-hat websites are barely affected — and any impact is only temporary. So if you intend to run a website for the long term, never seek quick success. Instead, build it steadily, step by step.

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