If one puts up a bunch of Adsense and affiliate landing pages and buys links to get high PR and good SERP's that could be considered "Black Hat". Like I said, it is better than working construction if you are that smart and can get away with it, lawyers do it everyday and no one thinks twice about their BS
That's crap anthony... Buying links is buying advertising.. Putting up affiliate pages is no crime either...
What's crap about it? Google took out many sites for selling links based on their PR value SE. Search King was selling "advertising", got busted, then got busted up good by Google. I did not say there was anything wrong with putting up affiliate landing pages, I want to do it if it can get me out of working construction.
Just because Google removes something doesn't mean its evil. Its about the searcher not the webmaster. If AdSense or Affiliate site provide the infor the searcher is looking for, then they are relevant. Even if they got their by having hidden text or cloaking
Thanks for clearing it up for me, I kinda figured it out but liked to hear your views on the matter. Oh, there your wrong, Google is the law in the land of Google, and we all want to be famous there and definetely not thrown in GoogleJail, it's a baaaaad place to be *shrugs* You could say that White Hat is everything I do and your natural links while Black Hat is everything but natural links when you do it As far as my Star Wars studies got (read lots of books some years ago) there is actually a white side to the force which places the Jedi side as some sort of greyish practice.
By the way, you can easily be penalized or banned even if you are a so called "White Hat". That is one of the main reasons I think those terms are dangerous. They somehow imply that one is right and one is wrong.
I think I got the really white stuff figured out, but what are the nice/effective "off white"/"light gray" things to do? And what are the really dark things to ("Beware of the dark side Luke") stay away from?
People wouldn't use something if it didn't work... There isn't really anything you should stay away from - If it works, use it.
I agree wholeheartedly. The only obvious exception I would point out is if you are doing SEO for someone else. Its crucial that you point out the possible risks involved. This is where Traffic Power sucks. They tell you its perfectly fine and safe yet they get most of their customers banned. That can be devestating for a business that can't just move on to the next thing
Ethical is such a personal thing. Do you do what you consider unethical things for your clients if they ask you to. If so how do you handle the risk part?
The bottom line is to drive traffic to your sites, I have many #1 SERP positions in many keywords, so you get 10-20 hits a day from those. Big deal, that is why Shawn started the co-op, high SERP positions alone will not make anyone rich. You have to buy banners on high traffic sites, advertise offline, do press releases, use direct marketing (mail order) to drive traffic, just sitting around waiting for high SERP's to make you rich is not enough.
Do you think I don't realise that? yfs, I think that for client stuff, I draw the line at auto generated content (well, a little is ok, just don't take the piss) and cloaking... There's a bit of a stigma associated with cloaking, and anyway, unless the client has lots of money, cloaking isn't worth the hassle... So long as you give clients the facts, I think that the important thing - they are always gonna wanna do what they wanna do, you can only advice and offer suggestions.
Would you take on a client that said "I know cloaking to the extreme will get me banned but will you take on my sites and start new ones every time ones banned.?" Do you think that could backfire on a Professional SEO as they may be irreversably linked to that method of SEO and scare away other long term clients. Or do people understand that you are only doing work a client has requested?
Some clients are some serious risk takers though and wind up getting themselves banned while "trying to help".
By the way, you can get more information at a site like this There are lots more where that came from as there will always be a market for those techniques.
Never experienced that, so I'll have to let you know when I do... If I'm doing something semi-naughty, I won't directly associate myself with it.