Black Hat vs. White Hat

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Mike

Mike

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Jun 27, 2006
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On the firing line
  • How would you describe your style?
  • Or do you do whatever makes money?
  • Where do YOU draw the line?
Here's my answers:

At work, I don't have a choice, we have do everything by the books. I'm not complaining, but it would be nice to bend the rules a bit sometimes. At home, I want to learn every thing that both sides have to offer. I realize that a site built using purely WH SEO will last longer in the SE's (generally), but has a much slower monetary incline. Whereas a purely BH site can skyrocket, make you some quick cash and then get banned by the big G.

I draw the line at something that could get me thrown in jail. If it's considered shady by the White Hatters, but not illegal, then I'm all for it.

How about you?
 


I think it's a good idea to try some black hat SEO on sites that don't matter to you. How else do you know how far you can push before you get the site banned or going backwards in the rankings. It adds to your experience at knowing how the search engines see a site and what is possible to maximise your sites goals.
 
jacob said:
can someone explain the difference between white hat vs black hat? i keep reading it in posts but not clear as to the difference
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See, this is ther discussions about BH v. WH etc. sorta don't work.

What's ok to you (i.e. creating Blogger blogs for backlinks to your own sites) might not be ok to someone else. They'd call it BH. You'd call it WH.

There IS no clear definition.

And really, debating whether a particular technique is WH or BH is an exercise in futility. Or wether one should use BH techniques - since everyone's opinion on the definition itself is different.
 
I basically believe that their is really no hats,, the only hat their could really be is grey hats. If you have a site and you slap a link to it in every directory on the web, this could be considered BH since your manipulating the way the SE's view your site and the links to your site were not natural.

The issue some have with BH is that they use techniques to get their sites indexed faster and therefore pushing the so called WH sites dowin in the serps.

I think everyone should try both or every method out there. BH is nothing you can go to jail for or get the cops to your door for. The SE's TOS is not law, its just guidelines, if you break their TOS they ban your site. I have had friends who have had sites banned in the SE's , they just build more. I have never seen anyone get their adsense account banned for scraper sites or spam sites. Clicking your own ads is the way you get banned from adsense.

It is rare to have a BH site last to awfully long in the SE's,, most of mine I have last a few months, some people I talk to only have theirs last a few weeks to a month. Therefore they constantly build more sites everyday. I have one site that has made me 100+ a month for almaost a year, and some make you 30-40 a day for a couple of months,, others make you shit, zero ,zilch nada.

I dont condone going BH, but i do know for a fact if you start studying the Darker Side you will know changes hitting the SE's before the Pure Grey Hats ( thats right not WH's) will.

The thing about BH's is that they constantly change with the times, whereas grey hatters will use the same techniques until they are void, and then scramble around in a panic when their earnings hit the bottom, looking for the new way to make money.
 
everyone is long term oriented. but what i dont get is people claiming they are white hat when in all actuality they are right on the line. If you have ever paid for a link or submitted your site to directories then you cant call yourself white hat. By buying these services and submitting to directories your tricking the search engines into believing your sites are getting a lot of natural/organic links,, which is clearly against the Google and Yahoo TOS.
 
Mill said:
everyone is long term oriented. but what i dont get is people claiming they are white hat when in all actuality they are right on the line. If you have ever paid for a link or submitted your site to directories then you cant call yourself white hat. By buying these services and submitting to directories your tricking the search engines into believing your sites are getting a lot of natural/organic links,, which is clearly against the Google and Yahoo TOS.
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You make a good point.
 
i'm a devloper and haven't gotten much into promoting my sites or writing content for them. one thing that's been intriguing me across forums/blogs, is that everyone has different views of what is morale vs ethical as is the case of this thread being WH vs BH. what one person says is "ok" another says is not. I guess the bottom line is whether or not what you're doing is breaking TOS's or any other laws/regulations.

to answer the question though, i've not picked up that pencil yet to draw any lines but am one to play by the rules but also see the benefits of both.
 
There is such a fine line that its really not worth debating, do what works for you, if you fuck up and your site gets dropped build another and learn from your previous experience.
 
shoemoney said:
I have a wild opinion on SEO.

I think like all seo is blackhat because seo in itself is optimizing for search engines. Its just artificially inflating what would naturally be.
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I definitely agree with this. That's one of the reasons why I don't see BH as a bad thing. It's just another form of content manipulation. So because Google states in their guidelines that they don't like it, suddenly every kiss ass webmaster in the land dubs it as the law. It's total crap. Here's the deal, as long as it doesn't hurt or harm someone and is LEGAL, and by that I mean in your state or country, and it makes you money, do it. I'm actually glad a lot of people don't agree with it and won't do it, because it definitely slims down the competition. Now instead of 100,000 competitors, we would have 10, or even less sometimes, and that right there makes a world of difference.

SEO is in fact a form of manipulation, because if there wasn't such thing as seo, then every site would be as visually beautiful as possible, and very few sites would have keyword related content. But since content is a major aspect of SEO and so is keyword placement, BH just takes the rules, and finds quicker and more profitable loopholes, rather than just waiting around. Sure, Google will in fact drop your site after 6-10 months, but shit, if you could dominate an entire niche for that amount of time, do you have any idea how much money you would be making? It would be completely worthwhile, both time and investment wise.

I no longer have BH sites, but I sure am debating on getting back into it, because it made my life so much easier, and as for my daily earnings, it was unreal. Granted, it was for a very tough industry (porn), but also very lucrative from an affiliate stand point. But now, we have Adsense and YPN, and we can be getting paid dollars per click instead of pennies, shit, sign me up again because it's like a gold rush, and instead of everyone flocking to find gold, the large majority of the people are saying "no, it's a bad thing, and you will get caught and make people cry". Sorry, but that doesn't fly with me. If something has the potential to bring me $100k's more per month or year, and it's legal, and doesn't hurt anyone (and don't give me shit about hurting other people's rankings or business, because competitors are enemies, and if I can do something they won't to gain an edge, I'm game) then yes, I will do it, no questions asked!

:2twocents:
 
what about the risk of getting your YPN or adsense accound killed 'cause you're running ad's on your cloaked bh sites? that's got to be in their TOS somewhere.
 
kyleirwin said:
what about the risk of getting your YPN or adsense accound killed 'cause you're running ad's on your cloaked bh sites? that's got to be in their TOS somewhere.
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That can be avoided by being incorporated and getting an account under your business name. If that account gets banned, than just start another corporation.

But the truth is, if you are making Google or Yahoo a significant amount from their ads, they most likely are not going to ban you. I guarantee that the Search Engines don't want all BH'ers out of their ad programs, there is too much $$$ in them.
 
DruSam said:
That can be avoided by being incorporated and getting an account under your business name. If that account gets banned, than just start another corporation.

But the truth is, if you are making Google or Yahoo a significant amount from their ads, they most likely are not going to ban you. I guarantee that the Search Engines don't want all BH'ers out of their ad programs, there is too much $$$ in them.
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I've heard the chances of getting banned from Adsense or YPN due to having a cloaked site or any other type of BH site.. slim to none my friends. In fact, I've never tried it, but after speaking to some BH'ers recently, none of them have ever heard of someone getting dropped because of that style. You're more likely to get dropped for having an irrelevant content site, sorta like the myspace ones that show different ads with images next to them that are completely irrelevant but get high CTR's. In fact, it's definitely not a "well he's a big publisher, so we won't touch him" type of deal, because I know of PLENTY of people who have been dropped, and were making some major dinero with their accounts. Believe it or not, as much as someone may not agree or like BH'ers, they are in fact keeping their sites relevant to the niche, and the adsense ads that are shown are completely relevant, so where's the problem exactly?
 
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