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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 experienced I get in 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.
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 #2] without you knowing will considerably reduce visitor
traffic. I now want to know and memorize every superior info online
that tells webmasters how to maintain a search engine friendly site.
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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 @ 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]
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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