Blackhat myths and facts

So it's now natural to buy and sell links to outrank someone? It's natural to join link exchanges? It's natural to change on page factors for the search engines and not your users? Saying one is natural and one isn't is a VERY far stretch.

 

^ Man's got a point.

Although I choose to do things "by the book", I'm also mature enough to understand that SEO is an "inexact science", without set "rules" or parameters, and that there's no REAL black and white.

All of our efforts lie on a continuum, and it's up to the individual webmaster to decide what they will use and whether the risks outweight the benefits.

My main competitor (who has #1 spot in G and I have #2) has LESS content, LESS activity, LESS value to the end-user. However, he's a sell-out who has no problem whoring his site out for cheap links. Good for him.

Hopefully Google will eventually quit rewarding such behavior and practice what they preach.

By the way, there's no place for namecalling in this thread.

 

A screenshot wouldn't hurt your domains would it? And BTW I have a list of your domains so don't worry about that.

I don't and never have bought links for the purpose of seo. I buy links from high traffic sites for the traffic. Any link value is a bonus if the link is SEF. I don't change anything on my sites for search engines. If there was no search engines I wouldn't change a thing on my site. I design my site for my visitors and because of it Google loves it. And I have the long-term rewards. Something BHs will never have.

 

How do you know Google is? Google penalizes sites for doing naughty stuff but we can't always see that. How do you know if the site didn't have great content and the other mentioned items that it wouldn't have ten times the harvest? You really should be happy about this because you have an advantage over your opponent. I had a client who was penalized by Google and still ranked but once the penalization was lifted my was there a difference.

EDIT: Sorry didn't mean to double post. I copied it and accidentally clicked continue. I was going to add it to my eariler post.

 

Because I'm a firm believer in knowing more about your competition than they know about you, and knowing them well.

They don't have great content. They're 1/5th as active on a day-to-day basis. They're stale.

SEO tools show that their backlinks are putting them *just* over us, and I think they get a little "juice" from having the best keywords in their domain name (altho many will argue that it's irrelevant).

But it's OK. I work 10x as hard, for more hours per day, and have a more dedicated staff. We'll pull ahead.

I still think it's cool to learn the tricks employed by the so-called "dark side".

 

This thread has been very interesting.

I see one of the major issues (and maybe why the thread started?) is perception and where to draw the line.

My opinion is, if a so called white hat spends many many hours doing SEO A, SEO B and SEO C on their sites to improve it...and a so called black hat uses an automated script to do SEO A, SEO B and SEO C faster and on a wider scale...is it wrong?

I guess what I am trying to wrap my head around is that the "SPAMMING, SNEAKY, CON-ARTISTY" though perceived as Black Hat and maybe technically they are, shouldn't be in a class of their own.

I am beginning to sway towards the "both techiques can be used together to some degree" side.

Maybe if thegypsy is not offended I can work on being a "Search Engine Opportunist"

 

WACMan, very well stated

 

I talked to a few pretty big bh guys at ASW and they were some of the nicest, coolest and most willing to help me there. Just like anything else there is a bh stereotype.

As stated, most bh is just wh methods on a much much larger scale via automation.

 

Where do you check your backlinks?

Feel free to try it. But when you get banned don't come back as I told you so. Use one or the other don't use both. It is a waste of time to spend any kind of time on making a good site and then use BH techniques as it will get banned. If you want the long-term investment go White Hat. If you want quick money and alot of banned domains go BH.

 

Visio, how many times must we explain this to you? You never do black hat on your white hat domains. You spend 88 cents on a throw away domain and use that. If it gets banned 6 months down the road, who cares?

 

Sorry to jump in the discussion, but I see a contradiction here: if you don't use BH techniques on your "good" domains, then there must be something "bad" in BH, right?

As I find this thread really interesting under a "technical" point of view, what we might focus on is how much of BH SEO can be used on a "WH domain" - otherwise we are just discussing about (supposed) moral values - that I think have nothing to do with SEO...

 

It's really just the cloaking and content generation I would stay away from on a white hat domain. The link building techniques work fine (in my experience at least).

 

It wasn't a question it was a statement.

 

Analytics.

...and Google, and Overture.

 

For those that have sent me pm's asking for a forum related to black hat, I have started http://www.thedarkseo.com

Feel free to go there and ask any questions you would like about black hat seo and other various promotional methods.

 

So what your are advocating is ALL BH techniques will get you banned and it is that black and white? (no pun intended)

I can't agree with that.

Yes, there are BH techniques that will get you banned eventually with pro longed use, but to lump them all together and so ALL will get you banned. I don't think so. (Buying links as an example)

How would you classify someone walking right in the line between the perception of what these two groups represent? Also, if you break a Google TOS but not another SE TOS...what is that considered?

Before I start getting hammered....I am not trying to take a side....I just don't think an answer can be that definitive.

I believe you, and if Google was human I am sure it would too. Google isn't human though so, if you buy enough of those traffic links would Google consider you BH?

 

Actually I buy very few links so not enough to even effect my rankings much. I am not advocating nothing I just know how things work and on the forums I belong to over and over you see people asking why they got banned. You may be able to survive for a while but Google will find out.

 

I think there is nothing wrong with buying as many links as you want.
I don't think that is blackhat (most major whitehat seos do it).
Spamming for links on blogs, government sites and forums is what I have a problem with.
That is what I dislike about black hat seo.

 

You know whats cute, we have your domains too, and to be honest.. black hatters tend to be more vicious

 

Feel free to try and convince Google to ban me