OK what are we doing to our industry. A while ago it was relatively easy to get to the top of the search engines for most things just by building a good site. But now it seems that certainly some of the big earners are using quite sophisticated automation techniques. I’ve recently read in forums about automated systems generating hundreds of pages just from keyword, endless link exchanges or people who will blog for money, even digg and stumble automatic posters. I’ve done similar myself by using an automated web builder but that was just to allow me to build good quality content more quickly and not to deceive or spam. I now have the dilemma of what to do next. Do I join the grey hatters or just pray they get caught. The problem is many of this new generation of solutions will not be illegal. They are just playing the numbers game and automating manual efforts. I fear that to keep at the top and compete with others we will all need to keep moving down this slippery slope and build quantity over quality. Remember sub-prime loans and where continuously more aggressive sales techniques led them. I think the same thing will happen to SEO if we continuously use more aggressive techniques? But the spammers make money so I doubt they will ever stop and I probably just have to decide how far to join them or not? I’d like to stay pure and legal but I’m not sure I know where the professional, ethical, worthwhile or risking limits are any more. I’d welcome suggestions.
We are all tempted by this. Maybe I am old school but I still think building a solid resource and putting long term effort into ethical promotional tools is always a good strategy. In the end your audience will reward you for it. There are definitely tons of people out there using shady practices but I just can't see where that gives us an excuse to do the same.
Its the same in just about any business and even in life. SEO is a bit different because the industry and technologies change so rapidly. What was common practice yesterday is considered gray (or black)-hat today. There's the "ethical" way of doing things and then there are the shady methods. If you want long-term success, its advisable to stay on a path that you think is right and ignore temptation to put something at risk. If something doesn't feel "right", it's probably not
SEO is a field of non-stop/ continuous competition for rankings. There's a lot of techniques being used for the sake of a good search positions. Many considered black hat to be an effective way but it doesn't last. Gray hat also had some good effects than black but it's less harmful. The results from using these techniques are really tempting. It's hard and often times scary to take the risk - then the results are not guaranteed to last that long. Better to be on the right track than pushing myself on the road of nowhere...
Why does it have to be one or the other? I have alot of white hat sites, a white hat SEO Company sitting page one for that exact term and page 2 for just SEO. But i also have a mix of gray right through to jet black sites for both testing and income. If Google knocks them out, hey i've learnt things about the algo that helps my white hat SEO and the domain has paid for itself ten fold. Its a win win if you ask me.
But what about this trend to automation. Pure site builders giving hundreds of pages an hour just from just keywords. Automatic digg and stumble entries working overnight, while you sleep. Fixing of alexa traffic numbers by phantom visitors. This is serious stuff, not just jubious techniques. It's another level when you can build 400 pages in a day rather than a few bloggs or pages.