Backlinking is it considered blackhat?

I agree with SultanofSEO. As long as your are getting relevant backlinks and are avoiding link farms and automated bulk submissions, there is no fear of getting penalized by Google or any search engine. Google evaluates links with relevancy, as far as you are on it, you are safe.

 

I guess that's where I'm getting a little confused. While Google doesn't come out and say it's okay for YOU to build the links back to your own site it doesn't exactly say it's not allowed. like I said i don't mean links from articles and press releases that's intended to generate traffic by themselves that happen naturally, but here's Google's webmaster guidelines, note that it mentions PR, but I take it to mean ranking in the SERPs as well. And they mention that the other site creates the link.

-----

Examples of link schemes can include:

* Links intended to manipulate PageRank
* Links to web spammers or bad neighborhoods on the web
* Excessive reciprocal links or excessive link exchanging ("Link to me and I'll link to you.")
* Buying or selling links that pass PageRank

The best way to get other sites to create relevant links to yours is to create unique, relevant content that can quickly gain popularity in the Internet community. The more useful content you have, the greater the chances someone else will find that content valuable to their readers and link to it.

 

Yes, it is -- but you can't be hurt by this. After all, how can google know if you're the one doing it or not? A competitor could use backlinking blackhat to hurt your ranking -- so therefor, it doesn't affect you and in most cases, it helps you.

 

That's kinda what I was thinking. Like I said I do it, but absolutely hate building links so it's mostly to article directories. But most of those result in being backlinks, only a few of the top directories actually gives you any traffic. Kinda strange that so many of the well known services and software that's created just for this purpose are operating so openly, but I guess it would be hard to hide. I'd be curious to know how they rank in Google though. It's a shame that you're almost forced to do it just to keep up with the next guy.

 

It depends on how you build your backlinks. If you manipulate links and do the BH method (spam, spam , spam...) then it is black hat. That's why there a legitimate way of link building.

 

there is white hat SEO and there is black hat SEO. if you follow google webmaster guidelines to generate your backlinks, then you are NOT doing black hat SEO. as an online business owner, you are supposed to promote your site. as long as your link building methods are legit, you have nothing to worry