attorney doesn't like my site because it uses blackhat techniques

Hi

I have this attorney website that I am trying to sell. It ranks for a few keywords.

so I talked to this guy last night who is an attorney and he says "my partner looked at your site and he said it's using blackhat techniques. I dont like that, because how do I know the site will stay up there?"
I said "what do you mean by blackhat?"
he said "I mean methods that are unethical and google doesn't allow"

do you think this guy knows what he is talking about, or he was just trying to get the price lower by using some terms he read in "seo for dummies" books?

By the way, the site is not blackhat, i mean, sure, some of the backlinks are spam, but i wouldn't call that blackhat?
anyway, what's a good response to that? I said "no seo can guarantee the future because the search engines keep changing their algorithms" is that good?

Id hold to your asking price if the only thing he is saying is your using BH techniques. Especially if you say you are not. Is there any more clarification that his partner is referring to as BH techniques? How does he know your techniques?

huser21 said:

Id hold to your asking price if the only thing he is saying is your using BH techniques. Especially if you say you are not. Is there any more clarification that his partner is referring to as BH techniques? How does he know your techniques?

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No, I dont have any additional information. The only thing I could think of is the partner checked my backlinks and saw that they are mostly spam.

He has a legitimate concern. If you have been spamming low quality links, your site is blackhat.

He may buy the site and it may get de-indexed or penalized.

Sites designed for local businesses must avoid anything that is remotely shady.

Ask him if he likes the domain, if he does, then offer to rent it to him or sell the leads to him. (this is better for you anyway.)

This places the site management in your court, and he does not lose anything of his own if it craters.

He will just not be able to buy the leads when they dry up.

Tell him if you were using Blackhat techniques the site would be ten times more popular hence ten times the price. Tell him the site is whitehat, has been organically getting links and if his partner wants to shoot you a report, highlighting the said techniques employed you would be happy to look at it for him.

some of the backlinks are spam

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there's your answer

He's right in not wanting to buy it or be associated with it if he thinks it will get shutdown or he will be penalized.

Is the site in English?
If it's not I'm pretty sure that it won't matter if it's white or black hat since the competition is low(in most cases) and it won't lose ranking.
I've been monitoring one of my future competitors for quite a while now. Almost all his backlinks are spam, however he is ranking #1#2#3 for quite a few keywords.

favorshows said:

Is the site in English?
If it's not I'm pretty sure that it won't matter if it's white or black hat since the competition is low(in most cases) and it won't lose ranking.
I've been monitoring one of my future competitors for quite a while now. Almost all his backlinks are spam, however he is ranking #1#2#3 for quite a few keywords.

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The site is in English, but I don't see why they are so concerned that the site will lose ranking. I mean you can say that about any site. Tomorrow maybe we will have an update named "Giraffe" screwing all sites, including white hat ones. how could any seo guarantee what the future looks like?

Offer him the site on a monthly lease instead of a sale. He gets 0 risk that way and you get a higher price since you 'll be charging for future seo as well in the price (assuming you can keep it ranked)