Wearing a black hat in SEO doesn’t put you in a very good position because eventually you’ll get caught and your losses can be significant as you’re banned from search engines.
More than ever, black hat tactics in SEO are on the decline for several reasons including knowledge about the risks and including the availability of information about how to do SEO the white hat or ethical way.
The best SEO tip you can take heed is to consider this an ongoing process of learning and of action. Doing a bit of site optimization work daily or weekly to improve your site’s rankings is what is going to help you the most.
Whether you change strategies, do things yourself, pay a search engine marketing firm to do it for you or change tactics, the important things are consistent effort and quality.
Some top SEM experts suggest the following strategy:
-Links, links and more links. Interlink on your site and get links pointing to your site through forum signature lines, guest posts and blog comments.
-Quality content so that once search engines send people your way, the people will stay and act on your call to action.
-Long tail words and phrases to increase your chance of getting results from searchers that are ready to buy.
-Submissions. Submit to article directories and search engines instead of waiting for the robots to find you
-Social media. Market and make online friends to increase SEO and chances of making sales.
With all the available free tools to help with SEO, between research and effort, the black hat tactics just aren’t necessary.
About Sean Rasmussen
“Links, links and more links. Interlink on your site and get links pointing to your site through forum signature lines, guest posts and blog comments.”
One of the major issues is that this is the sort of promotional technique that Google is beginning to attack. Discerning relevant links from spam is no easy task, so when “white hat” webmasters begin to be brushed into the sandbox, one has to wonder if it is something that should be handled by an algorithm until all of the kinks have been worked out. While seasoned webmasters, wearing any color hat, generally know how much is too much,all too often new webmasters and marketers are given this kind of advice without the simple caveat that depending on how you get links and where those links come from they absolutely CAN have a negative impact on your search engine results.
Good tips.Blogcatalog and MyBlogLog are places where I search for related blogs to mine, visit these blogs and make relevant and useful comments.I also do deep linking and use track backs.This is a very time consuming way of marketing, but the results are also very good.
Thanks for the comment @blackhatzen. You make some very good points. Relevancy is definitely important.
@Tom: I agree. You can not only find great places to link to but if you do a good job being interesting and helpful, sometimes the blogs you visit will blogroll you AND their visitors will visit you as well.
You make some excellent points. I believe that the attraction to blackhat is that provides a false sense of a “quick fix”. Whatever happened to ‘good things come to those that wait’?
As a Newbie, I am always searching online for articles that can help me. Thank you
Black hat is definitely not a long term strategy.
As Google and other search engines refine the way they rank websites, the cheaters will vanish in no time…
Great tips Sean
If it is done properly you remove the sleepless nights worrying about ti
Hi Sean,
I attended a seminar last year where the speaker said that everyone used black hat SEO tactics. It was suggested that if someone told you they didn’t, then they were lying. I think that regardless of what anyone else is doing, I need to do the right thing.
I really need to feel good about the work that I do and this is something that doesn’t sit well with me. There are so many legitimate options to help us to rank our sites. I really don’t see the need for this.
I guess that comment on the seminar tells more about the person who said it. Because how can he know each and every person out there? But it is rather normal to assume everybody does it, so they can feel “normal”.
If there is a way to go without it – I rather do it that way.
Hi Renee,
You are so right. Time has now passed and I’ve come to see that not everyone does black hat stuff and I’d much rather work with someone who doesn’t do it. I will never go to that guy’s seminars ever again.
The thing I am worried about is that I could do something without being aware of it. So I will only do stuff where I know it’s ok and don’t touch stuff that I am not sure about.
Hi Sean
I take my hat off to you (white hat) for writing such a vital article. It is apparent by what Jazz is saying that there are people out there actually endorsing black hat techniques.
Well I am not going over to the dark side. People who know what black hat techniques are and who use them are at a great risk of being caught. I couldn’t sleep at night worrying over stuff like that.
I would like to be known for my honesty and not have to wear any hat at all.
Sean’s tips in his analysis of black hat SEO’s decline are those that by now we should be reciting in our sleep. As Sean’s disciples we should be preaching these techniques to all and sundry.
And seeing as the black hats are hopefully fading away, I think I’ll just hold on to mine.
I was quie excited to see the title of this post as you hear people talk about Black Hat in whispered voices – and you are supposed to know what they are talking about – well i don’t really (and your link at the top of the article doesnt work anymore
)
Thankyou for your White Hat suggestions and these are points which you cover across your blogs so it is nice to know that you are doing the right thing!