Why White Hat SEO Still Fails To Get It
Scritty
Elite Member
- May 1, 2010
- 3,019
- 4,707
Scritty, it time to show us your blackhat SEO
Well, I'm doing a "Churn and Burn" course in November - at least my take on it (there's nothing much that is "definitive" in SEO after all)
Scritty
edgarallen
Newbie
- Nov 9, 2012
- 29
- 3
I agree with Scritty for sure. There is no such thing as white hat and black hat anyway. SEO is SEO and link building is link building. It's true that poor seo will get you slapped but these people who think they are white hat are delusional. It's not worth arguing with them at all. I get a real kick out of the kind of advice white hat places give you. Really instructive stuff like:
1. Build something of value. (oh, is that all?)
2. Make your site easy to navigate. (very detailed - thanks)
3. Develop quality content. (anyone want to define quality?).
They give you no direct answers at all. It's like listening to a politician avoid direct answers. Best thing to do is experiment and keep track of what works. It's takes time.
1. Build something of value. (oh, is that all?)
2. Make your site easy to navigate. (very detailed - thanks)
3. Develop quality content. (anyone want to define quality?).
They give you no direct answers at all. It's like listening to a politician avoid direct answers. Best thing to do is experiment and keep track of what works. It's takes time.
gazmo
Junior Member
- Jun 1, 2013
- 164
- 88
Looking forward to the course
Churn and burn does seem to work for me as well with a few twists, but I'm not getting mindblowing amounts of traffic from it since I'm targeting low competition keywords.
Hopefully I can learn a thing or two about fighting with the real bad boys cost-efficiently
Churn and burn does seem to work for me as well with a few twists, but I'm not getting mindblowing amounts of traffic from it since I'm targeting low competition keywords.
Hopefully I can learn a thing or two about fighting with the real bad boys cost-efficiently
Scritty
Elite Member
- May 1, 2010
- 3,019
- 4,707
Yeah - do this.....
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Ay5GqJwHF8
And Shoeless Joe Visitor turns up
"Mmmm Chinny Rec-Kon"... "Jimmy Hill" (anyone who remembers those two phrases along with "MMMmm Itchy chin" wins a prize of some sort
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Ay5GqJwHF8
And Shoeless Joe Visitor turns up
"Mmmm Chinny Rec-Kon"... "Jimmy Hill" (anyone who remembers those two phrases along with "MMMmm Itchy chin" wins a prize of some sort
Ghoast
Power Member
- Nov 17, 2009
- 573
- 701
Hmm, I got a bit of a problem with this post.. I 100% agree with what you're saying but I have a problem with the definitions..
I'm a 'whitehat' guy.. but I think you got to look at everything in CONTEXT..
Why do I say I'm 'whitehat'? Because my link 'building' methods are not spammy and if anyone was to check one of my client website's backlink profile it's impossible to tell those links have been gamed..
But.. link 'building' is the keyword here.. any link building can't be 'whitehat' by definition
The problem with these kind of posts and discussions is the extremely blurred view of what 'whitehat' really is.. When talking to clients, and for all intensive purposes I do 'whitehat' SEO.. but if you want to be technical about it, no one who works in SEO can do 'whitehat' by definition..
people who sit around doing solely on-page and hoping for success with no 'building' are the true 'whitehat' guys.. and I agree, that's ridiculous.. but the issue is that most quasi-whitehat guys like myself don't fall into this category.. we're building links all damn day lol.. we're just extra anal to make sure there are literally no footprints..
Come SEO community, let's redefine some terms..
Blackhat SEO = does link building - spammy, quick links, quick results, questionable stability
Greyhat SEO = does link building - efforts to seem more 'legit', still quick, quick but slightly slower results, more solid stability, however still a little questionable
Quasi-whitehat = does link building - makes OCD efforts to seem 'legit', slow, much slower results, solid stability
Whitehat = does not link building - sits around on Google webmaster forums bitching at 'blackhat' guys - stability and results unmeasurable since they do fa!
I'm a 'whitehat' guy.. but I think you got to look at everything in CONTEXT..
Why do I say I'm 'whitehat'? Because my link 'building' methods are not spammy and if anyone was to check one of my client website's backlink profile it's impossible to tell those links have been gamed..
But.. link 'building' is the keyword here.. any link building can't be 'whitehat' by definition
The problem with these kind of posts and discussions is the extremely blurred view of what 'whitehat' really is.. When talking to clients, and for all intensive purposes I do 'whitehat' SEO.. but if you want to be technical about it, no one who works in SEO can do 'whitehat' by definition..
people who sit around doing solely on-page and hoping for success with no 'building' are the true 'whitehat' guys.. and I agree, that's ridiculous.. but the issue is that most quasi-whitehat guys like myself don't fall into this category.. we're building links all damn day lol.. we're just extra anal to make sure there are literally no footprints..
Come SEO community, let's redefine some terms..
Blackhat SEO = does link building - spammy, quick links, quick results, questionable stability
Greyhat SEO = does link building - efforts to seem more 'legit', still quick, quick but slightly slower results, more solid stability, however still a little questionable
Quasi-whitehat = does link building - makes OCD efforts to seem 'legit', slow, much slower results, solid stability
Whitehat = does not link building - sits around on Google webmaster forums bitching at 'blackhat' guys - stability and results unmeasurable since they do fa!
johnny6667
Regular Member
- Jan 12, 2013
- 232
- 53
Scritty I agree with you I saw one post on that forum and I just left with a bad taste in my mouth. As an SEO I fell in that trap of being all good and taking the 100% white hat approach with one of my sites which has been getting 100,000 uvs a month, and I guess whitehat worked from that stand point, however its not until recently I've been hit by penguins algo penalty, I cannot believe it lol, I didn't build a single back link to that site and I was pretty firm on not building any backlinks as this was my first ever "white hat" site and I wanted to basically try to go the all natural route...turns out the 7 - 8 months of effort was merely a waste of time and I may of been better off taking the black hat approach.
That being said upon my inspection there were a few sites linking to me which were questionable in their quality and I guess any webmaster and SEO should expect a few suspicious looking backlinks to your site, on the other hand I didnt expect my site to lose 80% of my serp placements for a handful of suspicious links. Since the update My rankings have been dancing but not much luck in bouncing back so far.
Bearing in mine I had auth backlinks from news sites like yahoo, NYT, HUFF and hundreds of blogs linking to me with in my niche adding up to about 600 quality links in total and approximately 13 suspicious looking links which I have since disavowed.
That being said, all my black hat sites survived penguin and panda with flying colours, few minor drops but they bounced back quickly.
I guess what ever fishkin or google feeds you do the complete opposite.
That being said upon my inspection there were a few sites linking to me which were questionable in their quality and I guess any webmaster and SEO should expect a few suspicious looking backlinks to your site, on the other hand I didnt expect my site to lose 80% of my serp placements for a handful of suspicious links. Since the update My rankings have been dancing but not much luck in bouncing back so far.
Bearing in mine I had auth backlinks from news sites like yahoo, NYT, HUFF and hundreds of blogs linking to me with in my niche adding up to about 600 quality links in total and approximately 13 suspicious looking links which I have since disavowed.
That being said, all my black hat sites survived penguin and panda with flying colours, few minor drops but they bounced back quickly.
I guess what ever fishkin or google feeds you do the complete opposite.
madoctopus
Supreme Member
- Apr 4, 2010
- 1,388
- 3,709
My personal story:
Whitehat:
I work my ass off, make a site with manual content, invest in it to make it really good and useful. All in all about several months of actual work over a timespan of 3 years. Several other sites including cnet.com steal ideas from me and implement on their site. I was ranking 1st page for most keywords. Monetization with Amazon making $1500-3000/mo. Stop doing SEO for about one full year on the site, it stays stable at the top. Then out of the blue I get a -50 penalty and my traffic goes to shit. Obviously I didn't do any bad things since I haven't touched the site in over a year.
Blackhat:
Spend 3 days to code a spam CMS. Get my writer to write spintax ($250 cost). Deploy the thing as an experiment. Forget about it. Re-discover it after half a year, put AdSense on it. Goes from 3000 indexed pages to 20000 indexed pages bc of AdSense bots in a matter of 2 weeks. Because of traffic growth, I'm making about $50/day. Throw some ******** comment spam links to the site from chinese, russian and arab ulra-spammed pages (hundreds or thousands of OBL). After 1 month, I am ranking #1 in google for 20000 keywords. Site now making about $7000/mo. Eventually, links get removed and site drops like a rock. However, during all his lifetime of several months made $35000. I'd say that for 3 days of work and $250 investment it was a decent result
Quote of the day: It's blackhat only if it looks like blackhat to other people.
Whitehat:
I work my ass off, make a site with manual content, invest in it to make it really good and useful. All in all about several months of actual work over a timespan of 3 years. Several other sites including cnet.com steal ideas from me and implement on their site. I was ranking 1st page for most keywords. Monetization with Amazon making $1500-3000/mo. Stop doing SEO for about one full year on the site, it stays stable at the top. Then out of the blue I get a -50 penalty and my traffic goes to shit. Obviously I didn't do any bad things since I haven't touched the site in over a year.
Blackhat:
Spend 3 days to code a spam CMS. Get my writer to write spintax ($250 cost). Deploy the thing as an experiment. Forget about it. Re-discover it after half a year, put AdSense on it. Goes from 3000 indexed pages to 20000 indexed pages bc of AdSense bots in a matter of 2 weeks. Because of traffic growth, I'm making about $50/day. Throw some ******** comment spam links to the site from chinese, russian and arab ulra-spammed pages (hundreds or thousands of OBL). After 1 month, I am ranking #1 in google for 20000 keywords. Site now making about $7000/mo. Eventually, links get removed and site drops like a rock. However, during all his lifetime of several months made $35000. I'd say that for 3 days of work and $250 investment it was a decent result
Quote of the day: It's blackhat only if it looks like blackhat to other people.
Scritty
Elite Member
- May 1, 2010
- 3,019
- 4,707
My personal story:
Whitehat:
I work my ass off, make a site with manual content, invest in it to make it really good and useful. All in all about several months of actual work over a timespan of 3 years. Several other sites including cnet.com steal ideas from me and implement on their site. I was ranking 1st page for most keywords. Monetization with Amazon making $1500-3000/mo. Stop doing SEO for about one full year on the site, it stays stable at the top. Then out of the blue I get a -50 penalty and my traffic goes to shit. Obviously I didn't do any bad things since I haven't touched the site in over a year.
Blackhat:
Spend 3 days to code a spam CMS. Get my writer to write spintax ($250 cost). Deploy the thing as an experiment. Forget about it. Re-discover it after half a year, put AdSense on it. Goes from 3000 indexed pages to 20000 indexed pages bc of AdSense bots in a matter of 2 weeks. Because of traffic growth, I'm making about $50/day. Throw some ******** comment spam links to the site from chinese, russian and arab ulra-spammed pages (hundreds or thousands of OBL). After 1 month, I am ranking #1 in google for 20000 keywords. Site now making about $7000/mo. Eventually, links get removed and site drops like a rock. However, during all his lifetime of several months made $35000. I'd say that for 3 days of work and $250 investment it was a decent result
Quote of the day: It's blackhat only if it looks like blackhat to other people.
My take away is Google are piss poor at telling "shit from shinola" - and while they are as fucking awful at it as they are, \there is no point investing hundreds of hours in a real valuable site that they might just rip down for no fucking reason
soothsayerpg
BANNED
- Feb 23, 2011
- 666
- 252
But how come this f**king retard WH (There are a lot of them in my country and in fact they walk in pack; bunch of arseholes (They think they are the greatest and whitest of all white, even f**king whiter than gamma rays, jeez...)) claims to maintain their jobs, even getting promoted. It confuses me, "Does your bosses don't track rankings, i mean, would you manipulate your bosses by reporting traffic and not rankings, does those slipped on your bosses eyes... They are so f**king evangelist, exactly scritty thanks a lot for the word!
I'm sure businesses/companies hiring these so called evangelist have sites on a very, very touch niches bet it wouldn't rank with just a mere guest post... How do they getaway with it?
I'm sure businesses/companies hiring these so called evangelist have sites on a very, very touch niches bet it wouldn't rank with just a mere guest post... How do they getaway with it?
What's annoying is that Google doesn't want you doing SEO, but they have all these 'rules' set out for you. Do this, don't do that. You could this yesterday but today we changed our mind. So even if you are some old couple in your 60s just trying to have a site and don't want to do SEO and all the little things, you have to choice but to actually learn it because Google forces you to.
If you didn't want people doing SEO, there shouldn't be a Webmaster Tools. I shouldn't have to learn or follow anything in there.
Nor should my site get hit by negative SEO, or anything else.
If you didn't want people doing SEO, there shouldn't be a Webmaster Tools. I shouldn't have to learn or follow anything in there.
Nor should my site get hit by negative SEO, or anything else.
SEO Power
Elite Member
- Jul 14, 2014
- 2,642
- 688
I've been doing a lot of testing in the past few weeks and I've gotten some pretty consistent results from applying a particular method but I'm not sure if it's going to work 100% of the time. I might share it in the future once I confirm that.
I don't do prayhat SEO as you call it (if you aren't just joking). If you have a strategy, you won't have to.
- Feb 27, 2009
- 3,219
- 4,935
Haha..was obviously joking. I'm also testing a ton of stuff myself. There are definitely particular strategies that are working better than others, but like you said, at the moment I don't know how consistent they will stay. Just have to keep plugging along like we do. I agree with Scritty and a couple others who commented on here though. It's really not about WH or BH anymore. It's all about finding methods/strategies that work and exploiting them. Let's be honest here, if your building links, whether it be buying them, trading for them, asking for them, it is against Google's guidelines. Google has basically made all SEOs their wicked step children.
madoctopus
Supreme Member
- Apr 4, 2010
- 1,388
- 3,709
Exactly. I studied NLP and NLG enough to know this:
1. It is possible to detect most SPAM content by checking grammar corectness, n-grams and other factors.
2. It is too computationally intensive to do the above
3. If you do it however, you end up penalizing a shitload of UGC sites with users that are not native english speakers or lazy typers who make mistakes and dont correct.
4. You can build NLG systems that pass any detection algo, it takes just a bit more effort.
When it comes to content google will treat the following pretty much the same (for 'digital camera' kw):
A decent digital camera might set you back financially a bit, but depending on what you do is worth it.
Smelling the digital camera will produce a new era that begins to develop abruptly because of the sunshine.
When it comes to backlinks it is equally dumb, but SEOs are dumber and they leave footprints the size of a barn door.
What G has is great scare tactics and brainwashing campaigns.
nameexpense
Newbie
- Nov 10, 2014
- 6
- 0
Well said scritty, I like your posts. People really need to wake up to these baseless recommendations from the so called whitehatters.
dandan594594
Elite Member
- Jan 31, 2013
- 1,664
- 1,238
Totally agree Skritty. Only posted once in GWMF a few years back with a totally legitimate content/adsense guideline question..... next thing I know adsense was removed from the site in question? Ever since it is BH all the way! The whole WH concept still bemuses me today... slow play poker players still have to gamble at some stage.
mktanny
Regular Member
- Oct 22, 2009
- 226
- 62
Honestly , i think whitehat is lame , i meant its all *hat in the end ..and for what its worth , why not grab as much as you can as soon/fast as you can . Their is no point in being right and last in SEO , your site is going to get slapped , unless ofc you have some commercial deal with google or do not depend on it for traffic ...