Black Hat SEO

White Hat Views on Black Hat SEO
(Discovery Updates)

Not much here but wasted time due to SE algorithm penalties. A good rule of thumb for peace of mind is to ask "would I be doing this type of SEO work if search engines didn't exist?" A paradoxical question in that it seems impossible because it says two opposite things. Therefore, we can say, we master SEO work, but the "SE" in SEO is Silent Edit.

I like to think of SEO as Silent Error Omission. After working on backlinks and updates, one of the reasons we don't see our websites at the top of engines is because we don't know what makes our website unfriendly. There is a Silent Error! This could be considered Black Hat SEO by the engine's terms! Who knows?! What we did, to improve our rank, is being penalized without us knowing! We could be in Black Hat denial! Right?

Realistically, the bottom line in the success of any business is the honor of the owner. Has he built a business on sand (cheating) or on rock (playing by the rules)? The spirit of honor is the name of the game and cultivates synergy in a company.

The more I work on SEO, the more I realize the makers of the SE algorithms are easier on webmasters than we think. My thought is that if it is meaningless to the algorithms then it will not be added to the algorithms. The smaller the algorithms, the faster the Engine's crawl of the, now, multi billion webpages. Algorithm penalties exist, but they only penalize those web sites that show the likelihood of being maintained by an unethical webmaster.

I know SEO and here is my Conclusion for those considering black hat SEO: Don't. Getting and staying at the top of the engines takes smart SEO work and discipline. The only shortcuts I can come up with are doing things that other successful webmasters do. Having an alrorithm penalty attatched to your website [see Thy Work Priority #2] without you knowing will considerably reduce visitor traffic. I now want to memorize every superior info online that tells webmasters how to maintain a search engine friendly site.

Recently, I discovered that when your url name is not found at the top of Google, when being searched for after the http://, there is a good probability that your site is being penalized. The solution to fixing this penalty is to think about how you manipulated and distributed your backlinks. Fix the unnatural parts. Then hope your site gets rid of the penalty. See an answer on this penalty by JohnMu - Google Employee.
--------------------
White Hat View on Link Scheming: Words from Google Webmaster Help Center: Don't participate in link schemes designed to increase your site's ranking. In particular, avoid links to web spammers or "bad neighborhoods" on the web, as your own ranking may be affected adversely by those links (See Quality guidelines - basic principles @ Google). I take this to mean that if your site is not a "bad" site, your link could go on any webpage that has a good Google Page Rank. [see ThySEO Checklist #3]
--------------------
The grey Black Hat SEO I know:

1. Crosslinking from your own sites. But if you do it in an honorable fashion, you're just referring the customer to another site with a semi-different theme - so what!

2. Surfing your site with the Alexa Toolbar will raise your Alexa Traffic Ranking. The more pages you surf at your site, the greater your rank increase.

3. Updating your meta title tag once a month improves your chances of having two titles for one page at one engine. This increases your chances for better ranking with keywords - so what, my site(s) is of high quality and should be at the top for all my relevant keywords!

4. Posting to forums and blogs with the intention of getting a free link. Search engines are now using an html nofollow write-up attribute used in a link to instruct search engines not to credit the link as a backlink to minimize spam. The following syntax is used at sites to combat spam posting: <a href="http://domain.com/" rel="nofollow">Text Link</a>. As a poster, combat this Black Hat SEO by taking a genuine interest in the subject you are writing about. Also, see if there is a way to pay for your link through a donation or by giving the site owner a good backlink. I give good backlinks to those sites I posted at that give me good traffic. This traffic will show up in a free analytic program like Google Analytics. A third way to combat the guilt that comes with getting a free link is to create and popularitize your own blogs and pages hosted at another's site. Most of the free pages available online come with build in ads, some of these ads are pop ups. When you do find these create a free blog or page hosting sites, sign up using your strongest keyword phrase and give it a few high quality backlinks to start it rolling! Some examples of free hosted blogs are Windows Live Spaces, blogger.com and bloglines.com. Some examples of free hosted pages are tripod.com, googlepages.com and geocities.com.

White Hat Views on Black Hat SEO(Discovery Updates)

White Hat Views on Black Hat SEO
(Discovery Updates)