Comments on: What Is BlackHat SEO? 5 Definitions

By: BlackHatDead

BlackHatDead — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 06:44:39 +0000

black hat seo will die soon :)

By: Glass Jewelry

Glass Jewelry — Sat, 20 Dec 2008 23:39:09 +0000

I’m surprised nobody mentioned the customer. When we were just getting started with our glass jewelry website, the firm which designed our original website claimed to also provide SEO services. We naively shelled out large sums of money to this con artist thinking she was going to help increase our revenues and our visibility on the web. Neither occurred and she kept coming up with new crazy schemes. When we finally realized she was a fraud, we started fresh with a new design firm which helped with a total redesign of our site which integrated SEO from the beginning. They also advised us to perform our own SEO and that’s how I got started. After a great deal of self-education (thanks to Brian & Jeffrey Eisenberg and “A Call to Action”) and hard work, we are now #1 for “glass jewelry” and other important key words and that work has payed off in terms of a real increase in revenues and visibility on the web.

My definition is simple. Black hat SEO is fraud.

By: Small Business Marketing

Small Business Marketing — Sat, 20 Dec 2008 09:46:38 +0000

I too would love to have rules that are more spelled out. It is very difficult to know when you are crossing the line.

By: Anon

Anon — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 15:12:04 +0000

I believe anything done with the intentions of manipulating a websites rankings is blackhat. I really don’t think you can count any seo as whitehat, as all techniques are done to favour one websites rankings and compromise the quality of results.

Perhaps onsite optimisation may be classed as whitehat since it only makes a site more crawlable. And creating good quality content may also be classed as whitehat, since it does not compromise the quality of results, it improves them.

By: Vikram

Vikram — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 08:16:37 +0000

Nice definations

By: Eamon

Eamon — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 21:45:10 +0000

I go along the broad idea that Google is pretty sophisticated now. Focus on quality content and on, broadly-speaking, tweaking one’s site so that the content stands the best chance of getting noticed. Instead of, that is, focusing on the ‘tweaking’ in its own right. If you have extra time, just focus on the content. If in doubt just leave off whatever SEO you were doubtful about tweaking, and just focus on tweaking the content, instead.
SEO has its uses but at the end of day it is now only the packaging to decent content.

By: Janeth

Janeth — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 21:22:24 +0000

At one time Google said anything you do to your website with the purpose of higher ranking is black hat.

I’m just wondering what the white hats are really doing?

Oh wait, there posting on forums and blogs about black hats.

By: Website Design Orange County

Website Design Orange County — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 20:45:27 +0000

Unfortunately while these definitions are somewhat accurate they are also very ambiguous. If you are unaware of the webmaster guidelines you may in fact be doing something the search engines don’t like. But that doesn’t make you a Black Hat SEO.

Additionally, there are many rules that are fuzzy as to what may deemed White Hat and what may be viewed as Black Hat. It would be helpful if there were absolute rules, but alas we do not live in a perfect world.

By: Rob

Rob — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 14:52:12 +0000

Its good to see the definitions focused on various categories. Thanks.