"Blog farms are not black hat. They are standard SEO for anyone serious about making money online." It's is when you spin 100s articles a spam it all over places like Squidoo and MU blogs.
That is not black hat. That is simply automating SEO. Newsflash, spinning articles is not spam. Most content online is spun or mashed up. Anyway, a real blackhat doesn't care about abitrary webmaster guidelines. He doesn't worship Google, he exploits opportunities in its algorithim to rank higher, whether it is linkwheels or .edu links or whatever. The SERPs are not mystical although if you read the Google forum here, you would think they are from all of the people posting with no clue about SEO.
I dont go by black hat or white hat. If it works and makes me money or saves time i'll do it. And yer blog farm work very well, have a look at Link Farm Evolution if your serious. -Beau Waddington
One of our competitors is moving up in organic search so I've been following them for a few months. They're adding about 500+ links per month by posting articles in blogs like this: 365days365plays[dot]com While the content of these blogs seems spammy, many of the blogs they're posting articles on are PR4 & 5 and many of the articles on these blogs are from legit sites and even 'real' .org sites, (like the Ocean Institute). Our competitor's blog has similar types of articles and they're adding about 125 per month. They started the blog a few months ago and it's already a PR 2 so I won't be surprised to watch it hit 3 or 4 in the next few months. Are they using a Blog Farm? If so, how does one jump on this bandwagon?