I recently heard a story about a local SEO shop whose customers, overnight, almost ALL lost ranking in Google. Apparently, the shop had been engaging in “black hat” techniques. I’m pretty sure the teller of the tale made a “tsk tsk” sound at the end to help emphasize this as another instance where people who do evil get their just desserts.
But I think there is a fundamental disjoint in even using the phrase “black hat” – as it does infer a big gap in morality. And ‘black hats’ aren’t going around stealing the life savings of pensioners, killing kittens, or committing other dastardly deeds. What they are doing is gaming the system.
In Italy, there is a word for when someone uses audacity to gain advantage: “Furbo”. And it is, in a way, considered a virtue. In many cultures, it isn’t a bad thing at all to be a “player”. So how is it, in my own circle of SEO experts, black hat is spoken of with such disdain? Mind you, I’m not advocating black hat seo tactics – as I’ll explain in more detail in a bit. But by framing the black/white hat discussion in terms of morality, we might be distorting the real meaning behind the concepts.
What IS happening in Black Hat
What IS happening in black hat is the gaming, or the attempt at gaming the system. And in this case, the system is usually Google. Now, Google, we hope, wants to present the best search results to its users. I’m not always sure about that, and not at all sure that the reality isn’t that Google wants to present the best results to its users that helps Google make the most money. If we’re going to discuss ethics, there is a whole topic for discussion in that.
In a way, as a professional SEO, what we want to do is get Google to see our page as being more relevant to a topic than our competitor’s page. And who is to say it isn’t? Google, as we know, has an algorithm, albeit a SECRET algorithm – and we can all find countless examples of where Google does not provide the best results. So, we’re asking, is Google a better arbiter of best results?
Let’s consider a black hat tactic I recently heard discussed at SMX East, the acquisition of an old well-indexed website, and then peppering it with back links to our web page. Those link’s were NOT part of the original content of the site – and perhaps not even relevant to the content of that old well-indexed site – so in essence, the black hat is using Google’s system to sort of cheat a little.
By the way; there are some interesting studies (https://blog.ted.com/2009/03/13/dan_ariely_offe/ ) that show that MOST people WILL cheat in small incremental ways if they believe that can go undetected. It’s just a little cheat. In game theory, this is an aspect of the “Tragedy of the Commons” – people will take a little bit from the group if their actions benefit themselves a lot, but only hurt the group a little. The problem is, of course, that all those little hurts to the group add up.
Now, isn’t it true that emphasizing a key phrase in meta tags, H1’s, links, etc, is ALSO gaming the system? Maybe it is gaming the system but in a lesser way than acquiring a mothballed site. But if we’re talking about ethics, can we really talk degrees of ethics, and where do we score the little measures?
Mrs. Google
Imagine a classroom where the teacher up front is Mrs. Google, and all of the students are us SEO’s. Mrs. Google asks a question, “who is the most relevant student here to answer this question”? And we all raise our hands – each one of us wants her to notice ME, we want to her to pick ME! And sometimes, to get noticed, maybe we sort of bounce up and down in our seats, to help influence her choosing. But should the student doing the most bouncing up and down in their seat be chosen? Are they really the most relevant? Now, maybe one student not only bobs up and down in his seat, but emits a small chirping sound! Is the chirper a black hat? Isn’t he using a method of getting called-on that has nothing to do with the fairness of his being chosen?
So; what I’m suggesting is that black hats are simply taking their methods of being noticed FURTHER than white hats – and in comparison to most SEO professionals, is only doing what is done by everyone, just in greater degrees.
Beyond Good and Evil
As an SEO, I discourage the use of so-called black hat techniques. Simply put, they can result in a web site’s being perceived as deserving a Google purgatory. It would be irresponsible to put a website at risk in that way. It’s a risk management issue, not a moral issue.
The SERP has been dying a long and painful death. Every so often, a new Google enhancement causes SERP to be less relevant – instant search, local results, etc. In other words, DYNAMIC results based on the searcher’s demographics or behavior. Cool. And by focusing more on creating content that is rich in relevant clouds of words and phrases, we’re not simply trying to be perceived as being more relevant, we’re focusing on BEING more relevant. It takes the entire discussion outside of the black hat/white hat.
The ethics of gaming an unethical system.....
It's a matter of propaganda. The powerful control our behavior by controlling our vocabulary. What is the difference between "anchor text manipulation" (which Google announcements denounce) and "anchor text optimization" (which Google announcements promote)? What is the difference between "over optimization" (which results in a penalty) and "optimization" (which results in gains)? It's neurolinguistic programming, people.... more on that at the end of this rant...
Remember, Google itself isn't purely white-hat (i.e. purely ethical). Remember their recent efforts to capture public wi-fi data, the sharing of all gmail users personal data during the launch of Buzz, and of course, the whole Google Books fiasco where the copyright of nearly every author in existence was intentionally violated for the benefit of Google. Not to mention Google's unethical monopolistic attitude toward other Internet advertisers, including TextLinkAds. So don't base what's "white-hat" or "black-hat" on their directives! Listen to your inner voice, and the voice of your community.
The discussion of ethics in marketing through Google reminds me of a story I heard from Derrick Jensen, In it, he describes historical research about Nazi Doctors. Apparently, most of them did small things to help the interned Jews, like providing extra scraps of potato for the starved, or scheduling detainees for treatments on days they would have otherwise been gassed. They did the best they could to remain ethical (and help other human beings) in an unethical system (Nazi Death Camps).
Personally, I believe the best decision is weighing your personal ethics against the moral code of your industry, while working within the law (unless the law is completely unethical). Based on this perspective, I want to applaud Google for frequently breaking international and domestic laws (in China, for instance), even though I personally feel that breaking the law is usually unethical. I have to throw that in there because pointing out instances of unethical behavior demands some attention to the majority of instances where Google provides awesome services and has done great, ethical things (including providing phone numbers to the homeless, or investing in wind farms).
And a final note to my rant, it's a very bad thing to equate "black" with "bad" and "white" with "good". Very very bad. I know the analogy came from Westerns, but think now to what influenced the directors of Westerns in that choice. Remember, that during the time frame of most Westerns and in the country in which they're filmed (as well as their audience), Blacks were either enslaved and often murdered or raped, or were just recovering from those atrocities, but still without most human rights.
That's my rant for the day. Thanks for reading it.
- Glenn
Might be a rant, Glenn; but great rant.
I'm not so sure that move directors chose the black/white dichotomy because of racial predjudice - not at all sure that we could find any substantiation for that. What I do think is that in the making of silent black and while films, resorting to easy symbolism was a natural.
I went into this on another rant in comments below.
Haha, you know, I think ORM has made the quality of rants a bit better, don't you?
Thanks and all the best,
Glenn
Just a little note of history of cinema (sorry, I cannot avoid it, as I was in my past a movie channel head of programming). The use of black for bad and white for good is even more simple and relies on the archetipes of western & christian civilization, where black is Evil and white is Good, black (and for extension the Night) is the reign of caos and evil forces and white (and for extension the Sunlight) is the reign of Order and of the forces of Good.
Stop :)
Not sure (#devilsadvocate). In many cultures, white represents death (Japan), black the color of the renouncing of worldly pleasure (as in the clothes of puritans). I wonder if we can find some pre-cinema instances of black/white duality in art or literature prior to that? I'm coming up blank.
I believe there are examples.... Sadly, however, I've forgotten near all of my English Literature and Art History. :( Any one from a school system outside the U.S. who can provide literary/artistic references?
However, I can reference two social science articles on the subject, which have a much stronger memory: Buried Prejudice: The Bigot in Your Brain [social science paper] and The Color of Sin--Why the Good Guys Wear White [article].
Personally, I assume that since most of the referenced art and literature is Western, and since most of the art history and analysis of literature originates with a Western perspective, that the natural human process of ingroup preference maintained a white/good;black/bad association (since most Westerners were white). There's a bias in the data set. GIGO.
I honestly study SEO more than this subject, so I didn't know where to start, outside Google and Wikipedia. So I started there, and immediately found a modern example of the inherent Western bias association "white" with "good" and "black" with "bad". The understanding of "Yin Yang". Because I appreciate "peer review", here's a Wikipedia citation:
"Yin yang are complementary opposites that interact within a greater whole, as part of a dynamic system. Everything has both yin and yang aspects, but either of these aspects may manifest more strongly in particular objects, and may ebb or flow over time. The concept of yin and yang is often symbolized by various forms of the Taijitu symbol, for which it is probably best known in western cultures.
There is a perception (especially in the West) that yin and yang correspond to good and evil (not respectively). However, Taoist philosophy generally discounts good/bad distinctions and other dichotomous moral judgments, in preference to the idea of balance."
The point of adding the Wikipedia citation: Western cultures have a tendency to associate black with bad, and white with good; even superimposing this biased and false dichotomy over Eastern symbols that represent balance. Below are some resources that dive into this scientific concept of implicit bias a bit more (notice that I looked outside Wikipedia, this time with a site:.edu search operator ;P ):
https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/demo/background/faqs.html#faq18
GETTING HAIR “FIXED”: BLACK POWER, TRANSVALUATION, AND HAIR POLITICS
Personal beliefs + corporate culture produce unethical behavior
Separable Neural Components inthe Processing of Black and White Faces
On the Nature of Prejudice: Automaticand Controlled Processes
Trojan Horses of Race
Here's a good question: why not use colors that aren't also used to define a people (though I honestly think that practice, too, should stop)? Why not just make a collective decision to replace "white hat" with "green hat" and "black hat" with "purple hat" (not that I equate people who might be choking with being "bad"). Or better yet, replacing the terms with literary references ("black hat" = "Mordor-an"), or existing words (white hat = "ethical" or "accepted practice")?
==
Have a great day,
Glenn
now that was one hell of a comment. That could've probably made it into it's own youmoz post by itself :)
Indeed.
I started to do so in response to your comment.
But now I'm going to continue editing some manifesto content and then return to retrofitting a site design for Internet Explorer compatibility. Thank the gods for cssPIE. Well, actually, thanks go to the creator (Jason Johnston)...
Godspeed SEO's! Build some pro bono links for a local non-profit organization! (actually, that sounds like a good youMoz Post.... no, no, no... got to write this manifesto content.... see y'all later!)
Very good post Ric, food for thoughts.
Being Italian, I will try to reply explaining better the meaning of "furbo". It has, as many italian words, a double meaning: tricky and crafty.
As you can see, one meaning is almost negative and the other can be defined as neutral.
Substantially a "furbo" is a smart ass - sorry for my french - who is able to see the real mechanisms of something and therefore use them to his own advantages. The "furbizia" (the act to be "furbo") can be applied, from Search Engines to Politics, from Psicology to Hackering systems.
That means that a furbo is always bordering the line between licit and ilicit, as the football striker always close to the offside.
And to be a furbo not necessary is a negative fact. Instead, I think that - on a theoretical way - those "smart asses" are needed by the system in order to better itself. Take the hackers as an example: surely they are a danger fo the the system, because they discover its vulnerabilities and its weakest points. But needed exactly because of that reason. No wonder how many hackers are now working for Governamental institution or Multinational.
Therefore, when it comes to experiments, discovering, stress tests... I don't blame the use of black/grey hat methods.
The problem is when those methods and the "furbizia" is used for a economical purpose (as it seems was the case of the "SEO" agency). Infact, when it comes to things like coexistance, politics and market, rules are needed, or it would be "war" every single day. In the case of Search the rules are dictated by Google (as before by Human Based Directories and, maybe, in the future by something like Faceoogle). And those rules are neeeded in order to compete with the same starting opportunities. So, if someone is starting to break the rules in order to take a competitive advantage, then that "furbo" (meant as tricky) has to be banned and punished, because Order - even though the one who would need to make respect that order sometimes is blind - has to be respected for the wealth of the general public (in this case, the search market).
Finally, about those clients whose sites got promoted via black hat tecniques by their SEO agencies or in house. They too have to blame themselves, because even though they delegated SEO to a third, they ultimately are responsable of what has been done. One important precept in Justice is: the ignorance of a law does not exempt the person to respect that law. And it is a natural law, valid for every aspect of life.
In America, a "Furby" is a weird stuffed animal that talks to itself. I'm not sure how that helps anyone ;)
Ahah... oh yes, I know that toy and was able to avoid my mother from buying it for my kids.
Often times parodied on The Simpsons.
LOL !
Ciao Gianluca!
And thank you for your considered response. I love hearing more on the background of 'furbo'. The main reason I used it as a concept, is that wily trickiness is not always considered amoral - as you point out. Ultimately, black hat is bad business. The 'why' of it being bad business, I guess, is what I'm considering.
I like your statement considering 'justice'. Good fodder for another blog post!
Really cogent post Ric. If I could, I'd give you a few thumbs up. One for the message, one for the cool photo of the scary black hat guy, and one for having such a cool last name.
You make a great point about Google saying one thing yet doing another. I'm in complete agreement with you about why you shouldn't practice extreme black hat. It's not a morality issue at all. Like you said, it's a risk/reward issue where the risk outweighs the potential reward.
So three thumbs up Mr. Dragon!
Thank you, Goodnews. Only wondering, do you have one of those 3rd thumbs? I know there is a famous Bollywood actor, Hrithik Roshan, who does have a 2nd on his right hand. It's supposedly very good luck.
glad to know you like bollywood movies :)
I'm based in the UK, where Google avoid paying any tax on the Ad revenue we Brits give them. In my book that makes the behaviour of black hat SEOs seem practically angelic. Black hat activity is certainly extremely foolish, but it is hardly immoral, certainly not compared to industrial-strength, black hat, tax avoidance. Tut tut.
Sorry, I was the thumbs down. But I disagree; Black hat tax avoidance? Hardly. I feel like demanding almost 30% of revenues should be considered morally wrong! Cudos to them for mainly operating out of a country that is literally "right next door," but charges them less then half the taxes. Ever played SimCity? Same thing happens there, raise taxes and businesses leave; or just don't move in the first place.
Hee hee, I was being a little contentious, Earl, of course ;) But we'll agree to disagree on this one.
I just wish I'd posted my comment the day this blog post was created, 'cos I'd have loved to have seen how the debate developed. Anyone drawn to read a post titled Beyond Good and Evil in SEO was bound to have an opinion worth hearing, whichever side of the fence they sit.
Great post, lots of the same questions that I have been wondering about. Questions like, "does using a keyword equate to anchor text manipulation?"
Seth Godin nails it:
https://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2010/07/payola.html
The big players allow their rankings to be manipulated and in fact encourage it.
To me having keywords in optimal spots with correct emphasis is SEO IMHO. Google Places was/is the SEO killer. It is totally DIY (no expert or guru need) and is based primarily on location and number of reviews (positive or negative doesn't seem to matter). It makes sense really, do links matter or the opinions of real people? Which is what links were supposed to be measuring in the first place.
Watch all the review sites get gamed now.
Google actually encourages Anchor Text Optimization in their SEO guide. See page 16 https://static.googleusercontent.com/external_content/untrusted_dlcp/www.google.com/en/us/webmasters/docs/search-engine-optimization-starter-guide.pdf
Funny, Seth G.'s post seems a bit paranoid, "There are firms that manipulate which stories are posted and which blogs are linked to, and for years there are firms that have worked to manipulate which links come up higher on the search results as well."
Imagine a cabal of SEOs!
I'm not convinced that Google Places is an "SEO killer". Firstly because it only applies to queries that are predicted to be location based, but secondly, and more importantly, because Google Places listings can be optimised to rank. Google Places is all about helping the user to make a decision. If your listing has more information (images, reviews, description etc.), then it is going to be favored over a listing that contains less info. The Places update is just another piece of the puzzle.
There's an ongoing debate about whether cheating a rigged system is unethical, which, while I tend toward white-hat, is at least a valid point. I think where someone really crosses the line is with your initial example. When you take a risk for someone else, take credit for the benefits, and don't warn of the dangers, that's unethical. I wouldn't use black-hat tactics to get short-term gain for a client while risking their long-term well-being. If I did it for my own site, that's a slightly different matter.
Thats actually an interesting point: that the BH tactics in and of themselves aren't unethical, except when provided to a client?
Having been on the recieving end of that, it's difficult to tell the SEO expert that while he is getting me the results he promised, I don't like the manner in which he is doing it. And personally, I think it's highly unethical to charge me 100x the cost of spam SEO tool.
Ric, very interesting post. I remember as a wee lad doing the little bounce in the chair, with my finger extended as far as it would go, and saying "yes yes yes" so this rang a very nostalgic bell for me. You've hit the nail on the head that SERP is dying out. Granted there are quite a few new sites every day and each one wants to be indexed but at the same time would you make a site that no-one is going to visit anyway? Chances are you have a few friends or colleagues that were interested in the site beforehand who said that they would visit such a site otherwise you wouldn't have created it. Secondly, it's through referral links that search engines deem your site to have any worth so to be noticed get a link out to another site.
In reference to h1's etc gaming the system, I'm not so sure. I'm a developer, and I love dealing with structured data and a web page by itself certainly has no structure. Sure, it may have visual structure, some bold phrases here and there, and paragraphs but from a computational point of view it's a chunk of text. That's where the concept of XML sounded great, and that's why it was so readily adopted due to the fact that it enabled authors and developers to define structure within their document, but structure that wasn't strict. I personally believe that h1's clearly define what they are wrapping. They are the number 1 most important heading of that content block. It defines what the content is. It can however be abused and it's this abuse of it's definition that I would classify as "gaming the system".
It seems to me Google is the new Nokia or MS - it still makes billions, but products are getting crappier and out of touch with current or future needs - it lost its way and is focused on one goal only: next quarter financial results.
In my experience and in general terms. Google SERP's now display 1 of 3 possible results:
· for competitive long tails: content farms
· non-competitive long tails: ancient mid 90's sites
· Highly competitive terms: brands and anchor sites (Wikipedia, IMDB etc.)
Black hat might win on the initial get go, but it does make sense when Google penalizes those URL's as black hat often translates into a lousy user experience and high bounce rate. I know I hate it when I want Goolge to supply me with infomation and all I get is some rotten blog that is only for SEO purposes and chocked full of keywords.
Maybe it is a question of who the final "customer" is: the google algorythm or the actual real life customer who is legitimatly looking for the site? Is the ultimate goal to get any traffic even if it has a crazy high bounce rate or is it to bring qualified customers to a website that they are really looking for?
You seem to be confusing MFA/spam sites with blackhat.
Blackhat is a methodology. It has nothing to do with the content or design of a site. There are many fantastic sites out there that visitors love who use blackhat techniques.
I'd encourage all SEOs to learn some blackhat methodoligies. You'll learn a lot about servers (important), you'll learn a whole lot about multi-site management (really important), you'll learn how to manipulate large chunks of data, and you'll learn a lot about automating tasks. In short, you'll learn to work more efficiently, and you'll be able to apply it to any project.
Loved this post! Love your analogy of the squeaky wheel....that one kid who's practically bouncing off the walls in his frenzy to be picked. It reminds me of those drivers that barrel down the soon-to-be-closed lane, before cutting someone off in their self-important desire to beat the traffic. We don't want these guys to come out ahead. We know they don't deserve it. Seeing the keyword-buffed, nonsensical guys beat out the legitimate website who actually has the content the reader is searching for is frustrating, to say the least. Being the one who's searching is no walk in the park, either. Google needs to weed through the crap. If they don't, ppl will look for a search engine that can.
Acutally, I think it is a matter or ethics. Black hat tricks very often pollute SERPs and sites. The result is that information is harder to find, that lousy services get more visibility than good ones, that those with bigger budgets and less ethics will win over those who produce good content etc. etc.
I think that, considering the horrible reputation of the industry, trying to "defend" black hat is not really what we should focus on right now.
Finally, I'm also Italian, and I would say that most people use "furbo" as "someone, not very honest, who thinks he is smarter than everyone else". I think that the Italian "furbo" is definetly not a concept to be celebrated.
- Ferruccio
Black hat tactics push the search algorithm too. They force it to change. It's basically job security for the Google Spam team.
True, but it's like saying that scamming pushes the police to get better fighting scams...
The analogy fails though because we are talking about "criminals" who are "breaking the rules" with a ;) from the Google cops.
Hi Ferrucio, I admit; when I wrote this post, I thought it would attract more vehement opposition - and yours is the first opposing voice! I salute you!
But I will tell you this; I'm not defending blackhat tactics - not for a second. Only that framing the discussion in terms of moraity cheats us a bit in really seeing what is at issue. Perhaps.
I understand that the point of the article is to frame the issue on a efficiency/risk management basis.
However, I think that is not still proved that black hat makes bad business. Many sites use (and have used) several "black hat" tactics and they are consistently at the top of the SERPs. We wish black hat was a losing option, cause it would just make SEOs job much more interesting. Unfortunately Google is not consistent enough to make black hat always a bad idea to pursue.
That's why I think we are still not ready to ignore the ethical dimension: most of the reasons about why not to use black hat techniques are ethical and not practical. In other words: we still need the reason "black hat is bad because pollutes and deceives" because we still can not say "black hat is bad because it doesn't work".
Awesome post - annoyed you managed to find a good picture of a guy in a black hat, I spent hours on Sunday trying to find one for a blog post I've been writing :-(
which post? can't find it... BTW; fun site!
I think there's a significant difference between the 'Furbo' attitude you describe and black hat. To me black hat SEO is using deceptive means to show users content that they didn't want or ask to see, sneaky redirects, doorway pages, cloaking etc.
By the way, I've found it can be quite useful to take a look at the SERP's for a search term like 'Viagra' to see how the guys at the top are ranking for such a competetive term, you can often glean some useful tidbits to use in your white hat campaign.
Hi Libertine;
Not all black hat is used to promote bad content. What if black hat techniques were used to promote good content? Does that make it OK? If you search on the phrase "discount shoes", maybe shoebuy.com is more relevant thatn the Zappos sale page - afterall; they really do consistently provide discount shoes. What if the SEO team at one of the other shoes sites wanted to promote their page over Zappos, and they used black hat?
I think I'm talking about morally what is right + wrong. The furbo attitude you describe "using audacity to gain an advantage" is significantly different morally to what I personally consider black hat SEO to be. Buying the odd link here and there, if they are relevant and discrete is no where near as bad in my mind as the cloaking and doorway pages.
I don't think there is two straight lines dividing white hat, grey hat and black hat SEO, rather a couple of fuzzy wavy lines, winding back and forth.
In a sense I believe that a lot of SEO techniques are a reaction (to the system, to the benefits large company websites have, to competitors etc. etc.). It reminds me of people who push in queues - the more people who push to get ahead, the more acceptable it becomes - or at least the more people start to do it.
Great post Mr Dragon!
- Jenni
Thank you, Jenni. Interesting; your first sentence - that SEO is reaction to the advantage of large companies - akin to the explanation for terrorism, too, yes? That the weak have to resort to trickery in the face of greater power.
Great Article and I couldn't agree with you more.
It seems the bigger companies get the further they get away from what is important, customer service
I remember the day when Google was wondering whether or not is was going to make it and Yahoo was
the big fish.
I undersstand there are people out there that should be taken out in the field and have a good talkin to,
but I think there are more good people losing good money because of what Google decides. That
I don't agree with
Let the guy that does the best job get the best results, period
Thanks again for a great article,
Jeff Faldalen
https://jefffaldalen.com
I would say they are "gaming" everyone if their links actually lasted for longer then 6 months, but 98% of the links black hat SEO buy get penalized, and the comment spam they left around 1000 blogs in the past day will get washed out with a button of "Check Spam, Delete Spam"
The title really caught my attention and the content reeled me in, Dragon. Being relatively new to SEO, I steer away from black hat not just because of the moral issues, but more importantly, the risk/reward equation (ultimately, I'd rather have slow but permanent progress than fast but short-lived progress). I also don't see the black-hatters, who 'game' the system, as being better than white-hatters, but rather making different choices which will be rewarded/penalized at some point. I know firsthand that measurable/signifcant progress on the SERPs can take a long time and it will make even the most seasoned SEO question whether they should change their tactics, but well, patience is usually rewarded tenfold.
Great peice, its always on the tip of our tongues what is acceptable and what is not.......I still think there is an area of grey. For instance we use (some would consider) black hat ish programs to speed up our white hat processes. I think its tricky to compete against larger well funded firms in competitive markets using a smaller budget to really compete unless you are using techniques to massively speed up your processes.
My conscience is clear
This is great. Well, it is up to us whether we do it the good way or the black one. SEO is a very nice technique to make grow your site and let the people known worldwide that you exists. There are so many companies offering seo services but only few succeed in this journey. All in all if you do it the right way you can then there's no problem with that.
I love when you made an example of Mrs. Google (teacher) and SEO's (students). Back hat SEO doesn't do good for a site, Google knows what you're doing, you might get banned sooner that your hoping your site rank.
Sometimes someone just hits it right on the nail and this was one of those situations. Great post Ric.
Comparation of white and black hat is "never hear". Mrs Google and classroom is top of creativity :)
Great Post Ric,
That is a real interesting post. You managed to stay very nuetral not really advocating one hat or the other. At the end of the day the rules are the rules. If you are caught breaking them, not so much you but your client, will pay. That should be cause for consideration. Honest, relevant content, and best practices should do it, I hope. I am new to this. Once again, thanks for your insight.
Who wins? Blackhat or Whitehat? Raiders or Chargers? In the Monday newspaper it shows who Won and who Lost. Who cares, the newspaper still got you to read the paper. In this case Google is the newspaper. Google doesn't care if your site wins or loses depending on whitehat or blackhat. Google still wins even though they helped spur all the damn spam with their Google AdSense ads.
Black hat, gray hat, backlinks... these are cheap and affordable alternatives compared to the cost, time and effort of actually getting the trust and authority you really need. Sometimes they are all that is available given the budget.
I have a client that (against my insistance and urging) picked an extremely common name (sort of) for their product: Dan-e. Now, of course, they don't understand why they don't come up on Google & Yahoo!
I tried to explain to them that Google and Yahoo! ignore the dash (hyphen), but they didn't realize the impact until 6 months after it was too late to change everything. On a positive note, Bing actually works correctly, ranking their site #1 for the product name.
How do you rank a 1-yr old site for a search term like "dan" (no quotes) on Google/Yahoo without buying backlinks or other Black hat?
"How do you rank a 1-yr old site for a search term like "dan" (no quotes) on Google/Yahoo without buying backlinks or other Black hat?"
You could provide the most comprehensive guide to the martial arts ranking system out there (also called Dan's) and then try and get martial arts schools to link to it :)
You could create the Dan network, whereby you try and group together all the bloggers called Dan in one place. You could give out a link to each Dan that registers and a "I'm a member of the Dan club" badge that conatins a link back to your site. Support this with a "my names Dan too" Facebook group and a twitter profile.
Ok, maybe both a little ludicrous ideas, but as Tony Robbins says "There is always a way if you are committed".
You're right though, they should have just listened to you in the first place ;)
I've only seen 1 clear cut big-time penalty. It was for a site that was ranking on the first page for "drug rehab." They fell out of the top 100 for drug rehab and they didn't even show up when you searched the company name. (They did still show up in the PPC area, lol). I noticed the site-owner then went on the google forums and complained. They ended up getting reinstated within 2 weeks. My question is this, does anybody know of any companies that have requested reinstatement and still been permanently banned?
Best course of action is to play it straight up and have legit content and your site will get good search rank.
Truly awesome post Ric.
I've been thinking about it for a while, and came to the same conclusion.
Jane Copland once said to me (via Q&A) that "Google's guidelines are just the guidelines of a company, after all". And she's so damn right about it!
The part about risk management is an exact definition of what these techniques are for me. Maybe it's because Google is such an authority (well defined by Brian Clark) that we SEOs pee in our pants when we think about the possibility of our clients' websites being removed from the SERPs?
Thanks for this post! It made my day! And greetings from Quebec.
Salut Pierre-Yves, and thanks for the warm comments from Quebec - which, by the way, is where the Dragons are from.
No need to pee in the pants, as long as you do nice white hat for your clients and enjoy some black hat spare time experiments after work :]
It's like learning aggressive martial arts so one can improve their defensive skills.
Many thanks to all of you who wrote encouraging words on this post - and thanks to you disagreed, as well. In writing this, I'd really hoped to raise the dialogue on the issues of black hat/white hat to a point past a knee-jerk "its wrong because it's bad" point. And everyone who joined in certainly did that. I'm really humbled and blown-away by the level of discourse in this community.
Excellent post, one I'll be pointing out to others. I absolutely agree that the old SERPS is dead or at least on life support.
There is snow white and jet black, everything in between is somewhat gray!
I think the overall realization we should take away from the battle of Blackhat vs. Whitehat is that it all comes down to a solution.
Searchers use the search engines because it's an easy fix to a simple/complicated problem that they are having, and they want an immediate answer. In my experience the reason blackhat doesn't work is not because of your chance at "getting caught" it's because while you may be driving a ton of traffic to your site it's so obvious what you're up too that the end user loses it's trust in you.
Provide content that answers questions, and in the end you will be the victor.
Agreed. It is a shame, though, that the people gaming the system make it less effective. Spammers have pretty much made the email inbox an ineffective place. But in response, the system brings us... Facebook Mail?
dang; just noticed; I forgot to correct the spelling - the Italian word isn't 'forbo', it's 'furbo'. Apologies!
I fixed that for you. Good post!
Very good post and great questions. I believe that the following line best sums up your motive...
"It would be irresponsible to put a website at risk in that way. It’s a risk management issue, not a moral issue."
I agree.
But I can't help ask myself if people excuse their black hat tactics based on the precieved lower cost, then rationalizing that it would be most ethical to provide the owner with the best bang for the buck. Business owners understand risk. Most investors believe the higher the risk the greater the pay out.
Sadly, this stock market mentality, almost a compulsive gambler habit, influences both SEOs and business owners.
Thanks for the read.
And to take it a step further, I believe that as a professional services firm, we should even avoid the appearance of impropriety (to borrow a phrase from the judicial realm).
Great read, and great discussion as well. You've drawn some nice parallels here. I'm glad this post made it over to the main blog, otherwise I might have missed it.
And that is why is a good thing to check out also the YOUmoz blog... aren't we a very skilled and cool community of Search/Web Marketing people?
Anirban, if you are interested in learning black hat SEO, type such term in Google and u'll get there...
DragonSearch- great article with great insights, I wonder myself how many of us in this list can truly stand up and say that they are 100% white hat SEO, or that they would not use blackhat technicques at all even if some tactics were relatively safe to use considering the site size/model eg: large brand sites can get away with applying dirty SEO without going through filters, while some of the small sites would get hit...
From a professional seo point of view, its alot better not to have to explain to clients why their site has dropped of the radar. There is a direct relationship between whitehat and long term revenue growth.
Great post, if you elaborate more that would be nice...I mean technically.
I like the reality check. Thanks for this! Good post.
great post, interesting discusions.
Great Post. I really enjoyed the metaphor of Mrs Google!
If it isn't Google's job to find the most relevant site, who'se job is it? Google ahs always returned relevant results for me for everything I search.
I think if someone is trying to game the system they really aren't the best sites. Site with lots of quality content get high quality links naturally. Sites that try to game the system are the ones who know they aren't the most relevant. I think it's perfectly fine that Google is penalizing these sites. If you worked at Google to improve the search quality wouldn't you do the same?
Hi Angel; Thanks for the comments. I wish I could trust Google to always provide the best results. Many times, for instance in the case of local results, they do not. For example, take a search phrase like "manhattan dentist". I can assure you, the websites that are showing up in the top of the SERP have been optimized by SEOs. And what should the top results be? Why should one dentist's website be higher than another? In the dream ideal Google world, we'd say it's because someone has created more relevant content, and is found by the rest of the world to be most relevant. But often, its because someone has hired a better SEO. There is a lot of money on the line for these guys!
It's the users responsibility to find the most relevant site. Google is only a medium (and an intensely biased medium, at that).
Google operates on an algorithm, which people can influence. In fact, a very powerful minority can influence rankings a great deal.
This pattern is present in modern politics as well. Those who control the media control the message. Here's Rand on it (because he is eloquent, trusted and handsome, I often defer to Rand on the argument that "quality content equals high rankings):
RAND: Tragically, at least in my experience, the answer [to the question ,"great content equals great rankings, right?] is a resounding no. Great content is easily missed by the web's link-heavy audience, while some pretty crummy content that's been marketed well (or made the right connections or comes from the right sources) will tend to overperform.
The web's link graph isn't a meritocracy - like everything else in life, it's a popularity contest. Those who find the best ways to distribute, promote and market their works to the audience most likely to link to it are going to succeed much more so than just the "great content" producers.
Just think of it like politics. The best, most rational, reasoned, intelligent arguments are the exception, not the rule. Instead, the conversation and media attention (and thus, public awareness) is focused on concepts that are easy to grasp, virally distributable (which often puts rumor and innuendo above fact) and fit a compelling narrative (rather than add complexity).
On a slightly unrelated note, did you know that gravity does not actually exist (it's actually curved spacetime)? And yet most people still believe gravity exists? Did you? If it's true that most people believe in something that is not true, it makes you wonder if you should trust common sources of information, doesn't it?
Don't get me wrong, Googlers who might discover this post!
I do love Google, even though it has some flaws... it's still the best search engine and web mail provider around. Not to mention GrandCentral Google Voice. Really brilliant product array, guys!