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SEO 101 Black Hat vrs White Hat

By Dwayne Goerges of www.topwebsitetips.com

White Hat vrs. Black Hat

What? Is this some sort of fashion show? No, actually we are talking about two different types of SEO or Search Engine Optimization. If you have a website, you WILL at some point need to make a choice on the standards you wish to go by concerning the manner you promote your site. So, what is white hat, black hat SEO? Can I get in trouble using Black Hat? Is there an easy way to know if a SEO tactic is one or the other?

A question I read a lot in the forums is whether a certain method is “legal”. In most cases, yes, Black Hat is legal. The FCC has certain regulations about misrepresenting products. There are laws against email spam. And there are copy write and trademark laws. But most Black Hatters try to stay just below the radar so that they are not breaking a law. Really, most of the rules that govern SEO are documented by the search engines like Google and while they can’t put you in jail, they can remove your site from the indexes effectively killing your traffic (along with your profits).

Still, many companies feel the risk is worth taking. After all they can always get a new domain name and start over again. So, bottom line, Black Hat or White Hat is a matter of ethics, not legality. Looking at it that way will be very useful in helping you decide what methods you wish to use to promote your website.

First you need to understand that the “Virtual World” is very similar to the “Physical World”. You no doubt already have a set of ethics that you apply to your life and business. Let’s see how that relates to a website.

Mom and Pops Burgers

Let’s say you have a burger joint. A good one and you are proud of it! On the front of your building, over the door you have it written “We have the best Burgers in town, Home of the mile high fries”. OK, while that may be a bit of an exaggeration, you do server a large portion of French fries, and besides it sounds “catchy”.

The Doorway Page

The problem is you’re not getting enough business. So you come up with an idea….. You need to start attracting a different clientele. You’re store has 4 walls, each with its own entrance to the store. So you decide to paint one of the outside walls different. Over the door you put “Steak and Lobster only $6.99”. A great deal for steak and lobster! That should get people walking in the door, and when they get in they are going to smell your great burgers and fries and forgive you for deceiving them and buy a burger (or so you hope).

What I just described is what they call in the virtual world a “Doorway Page”. What you do, is you get a domain with the Keywords “Steak” and “Lobster” in it, write a couple pages of text all about steak and lobster and link it so that people will go from your “Doorway” to your real site “Mom and Pops Burgers”. Because you have optimized the pages for steak and lobster, the search engines will start sending you that traffic and you just hope that the viewer will forget they have been tricked and buy your product.

Legal? Possibly. Ethical? You decide.

Vandalism

Well shoot! Some guy just built another burger place right next to yours. And darn it, he’s pretty good too! But you get an idea. In the middle of the night you spray paint “Closed” all over the front of his building, in fact you even get your friend at the phone company to turn off his phone “by accident”, by the time he finds out and gets everything cleaned up, no one will ever want to go there again.

I just read an article where they guy bragged about how easy it is to get exploit a loophole to mess with someone’s htaccess file, getting the site deindexed by the search engines (removing the site from the search engines). He even went on to say if how sexy Black hat is, in fact if it were a guy; "girls would be all over him".

Legal? Well, you probably won’t get caught. Ethical? You decide.

Bait and Switch

Then your buddy comes up with another great idea! Advertise this awesome steak burger (that you don’t really sell) at an incredible price, and when people try to order one you just tell them you ran out “But you will have more tomorrow!” While they’re there, they are bound to order something else, and then hopefully come back again tomorrow (Bonus!).

For this one, you put the keywords on the page a couple times for something that gets a lot of searches but doesn’t really apply to your sites theme. And then you get tons of links (advertisements) with those keywords. Now your site will start to rank in the search engines for terms that have nothing to do with your site, once again hoping that while the person is there they will buy your product.

Legal? Well, in some cases you can get jailed for this one. Al least if you are in a developed country. Ethical? Well, you get the point.

Misrepresentation

OK, this is bad. Why is everyone going to that Golden Arch place, when your burgers are much better, you even sell them for less!!! I know, Paint a big ‘Yellow” arch (not gold), and start calling your business “Mc Domalds” (note the clever use of a m instead of an n) that way people will come into your store thinking it’s the other guys.

One of my key internet properties is www.norcalcars.com. Over the years, people have taken all sorts of very close domains, just dropping a letter, or adding a letter to the domain name. Then copying my site as much as they feel they can get away with. One even took my flash graphic on the front page and put it on his site, so it would look like mine. They say that “imitation is the truest form of flattery”, however I just find it irritating. Fortunately people with that sort of mentality usually go out of business quickly on their own, other times you have to track down their host and shut them down for copy write issues.

This only scratches the surface of the Black Hat methods available. Do a quick search and you will find plenty more. In fact you might even get some suggestions from many “SEO Experts”. Understand though, that just like “Mom and Pops Burgers” it might work for a while (a lot of both real and virtual stores use these methods), in time your reputation will be shot and you’re going to have to start over again.

The other option is to beat out your competition by being better than them. Learn how to attract the search engines without deception. Create a better site that people want to return to. While this may be slower than black hat SEO, you will be creating something that will continue to provide income for years instead of months.

Contributor's Note

This is the eighth in a series of SEO 101 articles I am writing. I am a 10 year veteran of website building and promotion. These articles outline some of the basic steps I use to promote my clients websites.

PLEASE VISIT THE CONTRIBUTOR'S WEBSITE

Wildnet Technologies
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I love the way you illustrated the concept of cloaking. I'm gonna use the "Steak and Lobster for $6.99" analogy next time I have to explain this to someone.

Glad you liked it. I had to reread that paragraph. Yes it is pretty close to clocking also. cloaking is a little harder to describe in a real world situation. Although you could almost use one of those tv screen type signs so that it advertises one thing to one person (someone in authority) and another thing to the potential customer. Going to have to work on that one a little.

You bring up some good points here. I find all this Black Hat stuff the dark side of SEO. Have no use for people who use underhanded scams such as these. I would like to compliment you and they way use used a burger place for an example. Really made the idea's clear!

This one was a fun one to write. I could have almost written a book on my burger joint with all the different Black Hat SEO out there to choose from. Somewhere around a thousand words I though I've better wrap it up before I lost my audience. You might hear more about Mom and Pop's business in future intels. :)

Thank you for sharing this 5***** intel and detailed information, Dwayne.
Your "KISS Principle" approach is certainly welcome.
Keep up the good work.
Best to you.
Frederick

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