Black vs White hat

After the bunfight on the $60,000 thread I thought I would make a new topic.

So you are "white hats"? Why are you here? To sell affiliate programs or get Adsense clicks. Fair enough. How?

The macho high rollers buy Adwords clicks to send people to affiliate landing pages, right?
No, wait. Google doesn't approve of that. Perhaps you send people to cloaked pages which redirect people to the affiliate page. That is white hat? That is ok?

Ok, forget that. You have a website. Did you make it for the fun of it or because it is a genuine company site? No? I thought not. You want to make money! Fair enough.

You carefully SEO every page based on well chosen keywords. You try to get backlinks. You show "genuine content" that you have paid some third world writer $6 to write.

You hope that when people search for "blue widgets" your page will be on top or your paid Adword ad will be on top. Then the visitors will go to your site and click through to the affiliate offer or perhaps click on your adsense ads. Fair enough.

But... there is no black or white hat. It is only a matter of degree. We are all using tricks to get spidered and ranked.

Here is the REAL difference. We "black hats" admit it and you don't.

So we can make 1000 websites to your one. We can get 1000 backlinks to your one.

Remember this: We are looking for the same outcome. A person searches. They choose a link to click on. They are offered a product (the same one).
They buy or don't buy.

White, black, whatever. They buy or don't buy. That is their choice and that is the bottom line.

Have a nice day.

 

interesting feedback, let the seo hat debate begin.

 

The goal is to please the customer while making money for yourself, and both methods are great for doing so.

 

we don't want to get rich with MFA sites, we want to build websites, usefull, good websites, but we can't waste the time only for fun, and we are interested in getting some money back. In this way, we don't need to take other job, and we will have a lot of time to work for the website.

 

I prefer taking the long-term view by going white-hat. It takes a longer time to reach your targets but you will have piece of mind by not living in fear of being banned.

 

My problem is that everyone has a differing opinion on what they consider black and white. So I can't easily classify myself in those terms. In my opinion, it's always best to be true to oneself. I need to walk my own path, and I try to avoid doing things that prevent me from sleeping well at night.

 

what do you get from building "good websites"? do your visitors thank you for your great site? why do you care what a user thinks as long as he makes you money?

sd.

 

I agree Couldn't have said it better myself.

Everyone walks their own path.

 

this is the defference between people who like what they are doing, and people who make everything for money.

 

What an easy way to see things and label people.

 

No here is the real difference. A true Back Hat person does NOT stumble into an open forum and openly admit they are Black Hat but White Hat people do.

They are many Black Hat people on here but its very rare you see one openly admit it, just like hackers never admit "publicly" on what they do.

Don’t tell me, you are the n00b that attempted a black hat back link on my SEO site?

 

No, but if I wanted to... Google "Xrumer"

Anyway, here is what I am saying:

Let's say some person really cares about collecting Star Wars figurines or saving forests or something.

So they make a website, blog or forum. Then they try to cover their costs with a couple of ads or perhaps Adsense. Ok. They know ZIP about SEO or pagerank or backlinks or metatags or keyword density.

Now another person (white hat?) says "Let me find a niche where I can make a buck". Skin care? That sounds good.

So they make a site with the sole intention of making money. They offer "genuine content" but they really want people to click on their ads.
They use every SEO trick they know to rank and get backlinks.

Well guess what? They ARE black hats!
If you are in it for the money and you use ANY tricks then you are a black hat.

It is like the old joke where Winston Churchhill says to a woman "Would you go to bed with a man for ten thousand pounds?"

She said "Well, I don't know. Perhaps"

He said "How about five pounds?"

She says "What do you think I am?"

He replied "We have already ascertained that. Now we are discussing price!"

 

Some black hat methods are just plain annoying.. ie all those spam links at blogs or forums.... anything thats not legal goes against my ethics.

 

Email spam IS illegal. "Spamming" blogs is not. (Even other people's)
Anyway most "black hats" make their own "blog farms" of many blogs to post to for backlinks so they are only spamming themselves. This is just for the search engines. It is unlikely that any "real person" will ever see those blogs.

 

Ok its not illegal but ceirtanly unethical...

 

Ahh.. Now we get down to the nitty gritty.
Ever heard the term "Nice guys finish last?" Or "Winning isn't everything, it is the ONLY THING?"

Are you in the business to be a "nice guy" or to make money?

It still comes down to this:

A person searches.
They go to a website.
They click on a link
They buy a product.

Do you want that to be YOUR website or mine?

 

i agree with you

 

Just get something useful to people and they come again and again.

 

Viagra?

 

spamming blogs/forums/GBs are not illegal but still they not good methods to get backlinks