The Difference Between White Hat vs. Black Hat SEO - Complete Information
Do you know what is Black Hat SEO and White Hat SEO? If you don't know, don't worry. Today in this post, I will give you information about black hat SEO techniques and white hat SEO techniques.
There is a lot of difference between Black Hat and White Hat SEO. And if we talk about black hat SEO, those techniques are used in it that do not approve by search engines.
The black hat SEO techniques used in the blog do not last long. Because when the search engine comes to know about your blog, it may ban your website.
And the search engine guidelines are followed in white hat SEO techniques. And with this Technique, you can run your blog for a long time.
Let us know in some detail what is black hat SEO and white hat SEO and which techniques are used in them.
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What Is White Hat SEO? (Definition)
"White Hat SEO" means following all those SEO Guidelines, Techniques, and Tactics created mainly by Search Engines. There are more than 200 Ranking Factors in it, with the help of which Search Engines can identify User-Friendly and Quality Content.
Doing White Hat SEO means, Following all the Guidelines and Terms and Conditions of the Search Engine to improve our Ranking.
To do White Hat SEO, you must take care of the following things.
- Always create User-Friendly and Quality Content.
- Keep Website Loading Speed Optimized – Fast Website Loading Speed.
- Optimize the website for Human Users and not for Search Engines.
- Keep the website navigation easy, so the user does not have trouble finding something.
Why White Hat SEO is Important for Blog
- In White Hat SEO, we can enhance our Ranking by following all the Guidelines and Terms and Conditions of the Search Engine.
- The results of White Hat SEO are Long Lasting. That's why web pages will rank for a long time.
- There is no risk of the website being Spammy, and the website is not at risk of Block or Penalty by Search Engines.
- The authority of the website increases.
- If you want to brand your website, there is nothing better than White Hat SEO.
What Are The Advantages Of White Hat SEO?
White Hat SEO has the following advantages -
1. It would cost you less money
Executing Black Hat SEO requires much effort and money but does not assure success, But were White Hat SEO strategies would help you work towards long-term goals.
White Hat SEO is free to do naturally dealing with other humans, and thus it would be an excellent option from the cost point of view.
2. It builds your brand reputation
- The white hat SEO techniques help you build a good reputation for your company.
- It will excite the customers' minds to construct a good relationship with the company.
- The clients will always try to stay connected with the company.
3. Security
Suppose you have optimized your website using White Hat SEO Techniques. In that case, you do not need to be afraid of rules violations or Penalties from Search Engines.
4. The techniques are Not Risky
The white hat SEO is less risky, and you have to worry about being penalized. No matter which updates Google brings up, it would not affect your site's performance.
5. They would need less Work
If you have used White Hat SEO, you will hardly have violated any Search Engine guidelines. That's why you don't have to waste time fixing those Violations.
6. Build Multiple revenue options
White Hat SEO increases organic and natural traffic on our blogs, by which we can generate lots of revenue in the following ways -
- Google Adsense
- Affiliate marketing
- Advertisements
- Sell ebooks
- Sell courses
Top White Hat SEO Techniques, Tactics, and Methods
A short explanation of each White Hat SEO Technique is mentioned below, usually used by professional bloggers.
- write quality content
- Create a mobile-friendly website
- optimize website speed
- optimize images
- fix website errors
- Build an easy and good navigating system
- Use title and meta description
- Use keywords
- Check Keyword Density Here
- Internal and External links
- Build High-Quality Backlinks
- Do guest blogging
- Create User-Friendly URLs
- Listing on local business websites
- Join online communities and question-answer websites
- Do social media optimization
1. write quality content
Whenever we hear about SEO, we hear the phrase "Content is the King." No matter how good SEO you do, you can never rank well if you do not have the capability in your article. Because with the help of SEO only, it can be made searchable and readable.
So
- Always write Original and Quality Content.
- Create Content relevant to the user's query, so you must understand User Intent.
- While writing Content, take great care of Grammar and Spelling.
- Use Lists, Images, Videos, Infographics, FAQs, and Schema in your Content.
- Always optimize your Content.
2. Create a mobile-friendly website
Nowadays, about 85% of the Internet is used by mobile devices. That's why all Search Engines are working on Mobile First Indexing. Therefore it is essential for the website to be mobile-friendly.
If your website is not Responsive, it will not give a good User-Experience on Cross Platforms like computers, Mobiles. If the user's experience is bad, the search engine can decrease your site's Ranking.
So, always use Responsive Themes and Templates.
3. optimize website speed
Any Internet user does not like a slow website. If a website takes more than 4 - 6 sec to open, Then there is a 90% chance users will move to another website.
Search Engines do not want their user to wait for your website to open. This spoils the User Experience and the website's Reputation.
Fast-opening websites are given preference in Search Engines Ranking. Therefore keep the speed of the website optimized.
What Affects Site Speed
- Heavy CSS and JavaScript use
- Hotlinking images and other resources from slow servers
- Large image sizes
- Not using browser cache
- Poor server/hosting plan
- Too many widgets and plugins
- Traffic volume
Best Practices to Speed Up Your Website, you can use the following tips and tools -
Check website speed using Google Page Speed Checker, GTmetrix, and Pingdom.
- Audit Your Site
- Choose Fewer Fonts
- Determine Your DNS Speed
- Fix all broken links
- Make sure your website is responsive
- Minify JavaScript and CSS files
- Optimize Image Sizes
- Pinpoint Poor-Performing Plugins
- Reduce the Number of HTTP Requests
- Reduce Total Redirects
- Track 404 Errors
- Use a CDN
- Use a Content Delivery Network (CDN)
- Use Light Weight Themes and Plugins.
4. optimize images
Do not forget to optimize the images. If the photo size is more, it will slow down your page loading speed, which can slow down your website. This is an essential step, so always use compressed images. This will also reduce the load on your server.
Essential Image Optimization Tips to Improve Your Blog -
- Always use Image Alt Tag.
- Always use standard-size images.
- Choose the suitable file format ( JPG, PNG, WEBp )
- Compress the image ( reduce file size ).
- Name your image files to improve SEO.
- Optimize the image title
- Use captions
- Use only Original and Copyright Free Images.
- Choose only 1 primary keyword for each picture
5. fix website errors
Try to keep the website Errors Free. Many times, even without our knowledge, some errors come on the website.
The errors make the User Experience terrible, or the website server may go down.
That's why you should always keep an eye on the errors of the websites.
To fix or find Website Errors, you can do the following things -
- Use Google Search Console and Google Analytics.
- Use Caching Plugin and CDNs.
- Always keep the Themes and Plugins of the website updated.
- Do not put any file or code from unknown sources on the website.
- Keep checking Regular Site Performance and Site Health.
- Test the website on different platforms and screen resolutions.
6. Build an easy and good navigating system
The website's menu is the navigation system of the website. Suppose the navigation menu design is proper and simple.
In that case, your website users will have no problem in navigating your site, and they will get and search the information as per their needs.
Search Engines also access the website's pages with the help of navigation.
The navigation system of the website can be fixed in the following ways -
- Use Responsive Navigation (Menu).
- Use only working links.
- Fix Broken Links.
- Maintain proper distance between Links and Menu Items so that the visitor does not have to face any problems.
- Add only relevant links.
7. Use title and meta description
Whenever a user searches a keyword on Google or any other search engine, the search engine on that keyword shows the user ten website results on the first page. But the user visits the same website whose Title and description provide some value to the user.
The Title and description should always contain what the user is looking for in the search engine. If there is an incomplete thing in the Title and description of a website, then it is more likely that the user does not click on that website.
The Title and description of the blog post should be such that they can convince the user to visit your website.
Title and description are metrics in SEO that are visible to the user on the search engine result page. From these, the user converts and lands on a website.
Tips To Create Awesome Title And Meta Description
- Try to write Title within 60 and Meta Description within 160 characters because Search Engines show the same data on their Search Result Page. Although it is not mandatory, it is considered a Best Practice of White Hat SEO.
- Always write Title and Meta Description in an Attractive way so that visitors get Attracted by seeing it.
- Make sure to use Targeted Keyword in Title and Meta Description.
- Highlight some essential topics in the Title and Meta Description so that the visitor can know what they will get to read in this post.
- Research The SERPs For Your Targeted Keyword
- Research The SERPs For Your Competition And What They're Doing
8. use keywords
Make sure to use keywords on your website. Only by identifying the keywords, Search Engines know what the website is about and rank them on Targeted Keywords.
No matter how good Content you write, if you have not used keywords, then the website will not rank. And even if there is a rank, it will take much time.
Keywords are also not to be put anywhere like this. Instead, they have to be used in their Content naturally. So that the User Experience is not spoiled.
- Before using keywords, do Keyword Research to rank on the right keywords.
- Use as many Long Tail Keywords as possible.
- Use keywords in Heading Tags (H1, H2, H3, H4, H5, H6).
- Use Keywords in the URL.
- Use Keywords in Image Alt Tags.
- Use Keywords in Meta Tags.
- Always target keywords with low competition and high traffic.
- With the help of SEO Tools, find the keywords of your competition websites and use them in your website.
Tip: You can use Free and Paid SEO Tools to do Keywords Research like SEMRush, Ahref, UberSuggest, Moz, SimilarWeb, Google Keyword Planner Tool, etc.
9. Check Keyword Density Here
Keywords are essential for the website, but it does not mean you have filled it with keywords. Instead, you have to use keywords naturally so that the Content's quality remains good.
Keyword density must be taken care of while using keywords on the website. By the way, there is no official fixed scale for Keyword Density. But 1% Keyword Density of Content Size is considered a Best White Hat SEO Practice.
That is why Keyword Density should not be kept at more than 1%. If you use more than 1% of Keywords in the Content, it can be called Keyword Stuffing. And it gives the Negative Signal of Search Engine so that Search Engine can get down your Ranking.
You can use SEO Plugins or SEO Tools to check Keyword Density.
10. Internal and External links
Use Internal and External Links. This increases the value of your Content and improves User Experience. And the Domain Authority and Page Authority of your website also increase. It works as navigation for your website.
Mainly Links are of two types -
Internal Links - When you link internal pages on the website, they are called internal links. Make sure to use internal links. With this help, the visitor can easily access other pages, increasing the User Experience.
With the help of internal links, you can keep your visitor engaged for a long time. This also helps in reducing the bounce rate of the website.
External Links - The links that point to the connections outside the website are called External Links.
External links are also essential. Many times you cannot give all the information on your website, then you can add a link to that information with the help of External Links.
External links increase the trust of search engines. And it is beneficial in SEO.
There are two types of External Links -
1. Do-Follow Links
2. No-Follow Links
1. Dofollow links are links that allow other websites and search engine bots to follow your website. Such links do not have a no-follow tag; anyone can follow your website.
Here is an example of what a do-follow link looks like in HTML:
<a href="http://www.example.com"> SEO TOOLS</a>{codeBox}
2. A No-follow link is a link that does not count as a point in the page's favor, does not increase PageRank, and doesn't help a page's placement in the SERPs.
In bold is what a No-follow implementation looks like in HTML -
<a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.example.com"> SEO TOOLS</a>{codeBox}
11. Build High-Quality Backlinks
Backlinks are essential for the growth of the website. But Quality Backlinks are more effective than Quantity of Backlinks. Backlinks directly affect the Domain Authority and Page Authority of the website. Due to this, the website's Reputation decreased and increased.
- That's why one should always focus on creating Quality Backlinks.
- While building backlinks, make sure to use Targeted Keyword.
- Create backlinks in the category of your website only.
12. Do guest blogging
A guest post is such a post in which we submit a post written by us to another high authority website, and the owner of that website publishes the post written by us in his blog; this process is known as a guest post.
We add a link to our website in a guest post. Due to this, we get a high-quality do-follow-back link and traffic that starts coming to our website.
But before doing guest blogging, definitely check the DA PA and Online Reputation of that website.
13. Create User-Friendly URLs
The search engine crawls the URL first on the website. In Search Engine Result also, the URL appears first. In such a situation, the URL of the website becomes very important. A user-friendly URL increases the User Experience of the user.
With the help of a User-Friendly URL, Crawlers and Users already know what the Content is about.
So always make a User-Friendly URL and add Main Keyword to the URL.
Try to keep the URL as short as possible.
Example -
( Good URL Structure ) - https://ift.tt/3ZkKp79
( Bad URL Structure ) - https://ift.tt/ebAnuLC
14. Listing on local business websites
As the trend of using the Internet on mobile is increasing, in the same way, local search is increasing. Nowadays, 70-80% of the searches on the Internet come in the category of Local Searches.
Local search is becoming a huge market. In such a situation, building your presence in Local Searches is essential.
Listing your website in your category in the Local Listing Website. So that visitors can access the website even from Local Searches.
15. Join online communities and question-answer websites
Register yourself on Online Communities and Question Answers Forums and create your profile.
Interact with people on these forums, answer their questions and build your audience. Here you can share the link to your website, with the help of which your audience will visit your blog.
But avoid doing Link Spamming. Share your link only when it is essential. Quora and Reddit will be the best options for question-answer websites
16. Do Social Media Optimization (SMO)
Create a profile of your website on Social Media Networks and share your Content there. Build your Audience on Social Media. With this, your website will not depend only on the search engine's traffic.
You can also generate good traffic from social media. You can use Ex. Facebook (META), Instagram, Twitter, Telegram, etc.
In short Social Media, Optimization is called SMO.
Why Your Website Should Use White Hat SEO Techniques
White hat SEO is a perfect way to improve website traffic and brand awareness without the risks associated with grey hat and black hat techniques.
The White hat is one of the best ways to create a sustainable and successful business website or blog. If your company participates in SEO, you must follow Google's website design and content guidelines.
Your website must be designed for humans, not for search engines. This means that the Content should be high quality and not contain too many exact keywords.
What Are the Problems You Can Face With White Hat SEO?
- White Hat SEO Has Limited Scope
- White Hat SEO is Effective but Very Slow Process.
- If you want Instant results, then instead of White Hat SEO, you have to use Black Hat SEO or Gray Hat SEO.
- White Hat SEO is a Consuming Time process in the beginning.
- Initially, White Hat SEO may seem a bit costly. But when its results start coming, then you will find it cheaper.
What Is Black Hat SEO? (Definition)
Black hat SEO is a technique that increases a website's visibility in a search engine by violating the search engine's guidelines and Google's webmaster guidelines.
New bloggers and SEO professionals do this process to get top rank in search results. In Black Hat SEO, we work against the search engine guidelines, due to which Google takes our website towards penalty.
If you are a beginner, you should be fully aware of this to avoid making such mistakes and improve your website in search engines by doing SEO properly.
Advantages and Disadvantages of Black Hat SEO
So you must have understood what Black Hat SEO is. Now, I will tell you about the advantages and disadvantages of Black Hat SEO.
ADVANTAGES |
DISADVANTAGES |
You can bring more traffic to the website by doing Black Hat SEO. |
Black Hat SEO Techniques create a poor user experience, and visitors dislike revisiting such websites. |
The website ranks high on the Search Engine Result Page (SERPs). |
Black Hat SEO Uses Wrong Techniques to Rank on Search Engines; therefore, Search Engines always makes rank down on such websites. |
Giving backlinks by taking money from other website owners. |
Search Engine does not like such websites whose blog Post has more Internal Linking, Which can make your website ranking goes down. |
Through these techniques, a new website can be ranked on the search engine very quickly. |
If the search engine caught you using Black hat SEO techniques, your website might be penalized by the search engine. |
The result of Black Hat SEO is quicker than White Hat SEO. |
Techniques of Black Hat SEO are illegal. |
Black Hat SEO Techniques focuses on the website's Ranking by ignoring the search engine's rules. |
These techniques violate the rules of search engines. |
Black Hat SEO is more affordable (cheaper) than White Hat SEO. |
All the techniques of Black Hat SEO can make your website suspended from the Search Engine Result Page (SERPs). |
Visitors can be taken to any particular page using Redirect. |
Invisible text is against the search engine's algorithm, Whose wrong result is not good for your website. |
Black Hat SEO gives faster and better results in a short time. |
When someone copies and pastes the Content from one website to another, the rating of the Search Engine Result pages of that website automatically goes down. |
Top Black Hat SEO Techniques, Tactics, and Methods
A short explanation of each Black Hat SEO Technique is mentioned below, usually used by new and professional bloggers.
- Article Spinning
- Cloaking
- Content Scraping
- Doorway Pages
- Duplicate Content
- Invisible Text & Link
- Keyword Stuffing
- Link Exchange
- Link Farms
- Malicious Behavior Pages
- Over Optimizing Alt Tag
- Paid Links
- Paid Traffic
- Sneaky Redirects
- Social Network Spam
- Spam Comment
- Too Much Internal Linking
- Unrelated Meta Description
- Writing Poor Content With Keyword Rich
- Spammy Footer Links
1. Article Spinning
The re-writing of an uploaded article is called "Article Spinning."
Article Spinning is also called Content Spinning.
Many users consider themselves intelligent and spin popular blog content using third-party tools or websites.
Duplicate Content gets penalties from Google, so bloggers spin the article's sentences and phrases to avoid this penalty.
Negative Effects of Article Spinning:
- It creates low-quality and sometimes unreadable Content.
- Makes a bad user experience for the reader.
- Make you an unprofessional blogger.
2. Cloaking
Cloaking is the Technique of a black hat SEO; inside Cloaking, a blogger can create the same web page of his website or blog in two different versions through coding.
Or can say that dividing his website or blog into two parts: the first page is for the website visitor and the second for the Internet, i.e. search engine bots.
3. Content Scraping
Content Scraping means stealing Content from other websites.
Using RSS feeds to republish Content on your site is called Content Scraping. Google does not like such blogs and even penalizes them because it is against Google Guidelines.
4. Doorway Pages
Doorway pages are low-quality pages that act as a door between the user and the Content. This page does not contain any correct information for the user. Such a page is made only for search engines.
Using Javascript, website owners redirect users to another page as soon as they come to it.
In the eyes of search engines, using Black Hat SEO Techniques like Doorway Page is directly against the rules. If you do this, you can be punished.
5. Duplicate Content
Many new bloggers copy-paste the Content of other popular blogs. And he thinks that he, too, will become a blogging star like him. But they are wrong - this strategy belongs to black hat SEO.
"Copy-paste" content exactly matches or looks very similar to each other. As a result, such Content does not rank in the SERPs. Search engines such as Google prefer unique Content.
In simple language, When the same Content or information is found more than one place on the Internet, it's considered duplicate Content.
6. Invisible Text & Link
Invisible texts mean writing white text in the Content or website. These texts are not visible to the visitor, but search engine crawlers can easily see and index them.
A few years back, this Technique was very easy to rank in search engines. But now, search engines have become smarter than before. And this Technique is now referred to as the black hat SEO strategy.
Hackers most commonly use it to hide links. In addition, many new bloggers put a large list of invisible keywords in their articles to rank better in the SERPs.
7. Keyword Stuffing
Filling your Content with keywords is called keyword stuffing.
Keyword stuffing is the process of inserting multiple keywords into Web content and meta tags to artificially increase a page's Ranking in search results and drive more website or blog page traffic.
8. Link Exchange
Link exchange is a quick and easy way to boost traffic and improve rankings.
This method works on a short-term basis! But there are risks too. If you add wrong links and unrelated links, it also affects your Ranking.
9. Link Farms
Link farms are a collection of websites that link each other. It increases the number of inbound links and improves your Ranking.
The search engine (Google) ranks websites using the number of links and other factors. But the link form negatively impacts as Google considers it a spam method.
The use of link farms was very popular in the days when page rank mattered, but times have changed, Google has changed too, and now this Technique leads to a penalty for your site.
Search engines (Google) can easily locate link farms, so you should avoid using them.
10. Malicious Behavior Pages
Sometimes it happens that other websites start running in the background on opening a website, some software gets automatically downloaded, or some pop-up ads start opening; they are called Malicious Behavior Pages.
Both search engines and visitors do not like these types of websites.
11. Over Optimizing ALT Tag
Images make your article more engaging and attractive. But most importantly, use the correct Alt descriptions for your photos.
Search engines (Google) cannot read the image; with the help of the Alt tag, they understand the image - what it is about.
If you add too many keywords, it will be called over-optimized, which refers to the black hat technique.
12. Paid Links
When a website takes backlinks from other websites by paying some money or exchanges links among themselves (e.g., you link me, I will link you.), these links are called Paid Links, and Search Engine does not like websites that buy and sell links. It breaks Google's guidelines.
13. Paid Traffic
When you buy traffic from unknown websites, you will notice that the bounce rate of your blog has increased, which means that people only come to your homepage and do exit from your blog, which can make your site bounce rate increase, which is not good for SEO.
Also, your AdSense account may get a temporary ban when you buy traffic for your Adsense-enabled blog.
14. Sneaky Redirects
Redirect is used to send the visitor from one page to another. It is specifically used when a page is moved to another site or when the site is moved to a new domain entirely.
But unfortunately, this Technique is also used in black hat SEO. It is similar to Cloaking; it has two URLs, one for Google and the other for visitors to which visitors get redirected.
15. Social Network Spam
When a website owner shares irrelevant links on social networks, it is considered as social network spamming.
16. Spam Comment
Comments help in building backlinks. Many bloggers or website owners use this automated comment method to create backlinks. Nowadays, it is one of the most famous Black Hat SEO Techniques.
You must have noticed spam comments. These are automated comments, which often contain keywords and spam links.
That's why most blogs now use the no-follow tag for comment links. And Google doesn't follow comment links and doesn't pass link juice.
Also, if someone makes spam comments on your site, delete them.
17. Too Much Internal Linking
When a website owner does many internal linking on any of his website's Content, it comes under Black Hat SEO. Search engines do not like such websites, and these websites are never able to rank on Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs).
Therefore, internal linking in the Content should be done only within the limit so that the website's Ranking is not affected.
18. Unrelated Meta Description
A meta description is a text that describes a website, blog, page, or post, and it is usually shown as a snippet in search results.
Meta descriptions are essential in On Page SEO as they concisely describe your Content.
The length of the meta description set on the search engine serves as a summary of 150-160 characters that describe the Content of a web page in a short form.
The meta description needs to be related to the Content. Many people put unrelated meta descriptions from the Content; when the visitor visits that website after seeing it, they do not get the information mentioned in the meta description.
This spoils the User Experience; some people do this to bring traffic to their website.
This Technique is related to Black Hat SEO. Search engines do not like these types of websites, and visitors also do not revisit such websites.
19. Writing Poor Content With Keyword Rich
This is also one of the black hat techniques. As a result, your website gets deindexed in the Google search engine.
If you publish low-quality Content on your blog but fill it with keywords, your Content will not rank. Also, Google does not give importance to such Content.
Therefore, only publish quality and informative content on your website.
20. Spammy Footer Links
If a website has placed some external links in the footer and tries to link them to its Content forcefully, then it does not seem natural.
Search Engines can rank your website down because of these Unnatural Links.
Frequently Asked Questions on White Hat SEO and Black Hat SEO
Q. 1 → Is White Hat SEO Illegal?
White Hat SEO is not illegal because it follows Google's algorithm and does not use any wrong techniques, so we can say that White Hat SEO is legal.
Q. 2 → Is it easy to do White Hat SEO?
It may or may not be easy to do White Hat SEO because if someone is an SEO Expert, it is easy for him, but if there is a new blogger, it is not easy for him.
In White Hat SEO, we have to follow all the algorithms of Google; if you make a mistake, it can affect your website's ranking.
Q. 3 → Which Technique is better between White Hat SEO and Black Hat SEO?
White Hat SEO technique is good for SEO.
Q. 4 → Which SEO Will Give Long-Term Results?
Doing White Hat SEO gives Long Term Result.
Q. 5 → What is Negative SEO?
Black Hat SEO is also called Negative SEO.
Q. 6 → What is the main goal of Black Hat SEO?
The main goal of Black Hat SEO is to bring traffic to the website and improve the website's ranking on Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs). For this, he also ignores the rules of the search engine.
Q. 7 → Can we do SEO ourselves?
Yes, friends, you can easily do SEO for your blog yourself, with which you can also rank your article on Google.
Q. 8 → How can I become a successful blogger in a short period, with SEO?
To become a successful blogger in a short period, you have to take the right path by - Finding a good niche for your blog, Writing about what you love, Focusing on marketing, Providing easy reading to your users, Giving your posts punchy titles, Keep an eye on analytics, Ultimately, before you hit the "publish" button, you must review your spelling and grammar of your article again and again.
Conclusion -
In today's article, Friends, we have discussed White Hat SEO vs. Black Hat SEO - Actual Differences and Comparison.
If you liked this post, do not forget to share it with your friends so they can get information about it.
You can ask us through comments if you still have questions or doubts, I will answer all your questions, and you can contact us for more information.
Please tell us through the comment section if you think we miss anything.
THANK YOU. HAVE A NICE DAY.