Welcome to the internet and "making money online" sites. Everyone is a pro.
Yup - if you make money at a task, then you can call yourself a professional.
Whether you do it with a professional attitude........ Well that's a different matter.
IMO (for what it's worth)
BLACK HAT - Pure BH might have nothing to do with link building per se. It's fake refer,dodgy doorways, cloaked links, iffy financial transactions, websites that put trojans or ad-bars in browsers, taking down competition with hacks or maybe neg seo (if that works
long term...something I doubt).
In plain English - pure black hat involves deceit of one sort or another. Whether it's fake refer, dodgy doorways, unethical financial methods, stolen content, trojans or whatever.
GREY HAT - Some link building, but also dodgy marketing, plagirised content. Basically anything that does not add value. It's not dodgy, no-one is obviously or largely adversely affected, but on the other hand you are not really adding a huge amount of value.
In plain English Grey hat is Not deceitful, but overall it adds little to the internet either. It's main aim is to make money with a lower risk profile.
BLUE HAT -So many definitions - but seems to be based on a solid website and a mix of promotion techniques, some clean as a whistle, others using automation. In general many SEO companies use blue hat techniques to promote major industrys. Keep your head down, make sure you see what way the wind is blowing. Be quick to alter techniques and do not invest in anything that seems like it could later have major negative affects. Fast feet, decent content, automation - moderately aggressive but no deceit.
In plain English Blue hat adds value on webmaster owned property but takes liberties and shortcuts in the promotion these entities. Adaptability and quick feet are the defining features
WHITE HAT - Building a solid website and promoting it "personally" only using automation to do things like analyse compeition. No spam* (errmm well see below for my thoughts on that)
In plain English - A very slow method that (and let's be perfectly clear about this) offers little or no possibility for new sites in niches that are semi compeitive or harder. The manual link building (often called" relationship building") is - if you think about it - * just as cynically motivated as Blue or Grey hat...it's just a fecking whole lot slower and puts the webmaster at a HUGE disadvantage.
My fave is Blue hat. Good website, good onsite content, many good solid links made with decent content. Generally automation is used pretty hard but not to the point of excessinve spam and almost always using decent content and appropriate sites to link from.
Why is my fave Blue Hat? BECASUE I have medium or larger sites. It is not the ideal way to promote every website, but for medium to large sites - those that you hope to become authority. it is (IMO again) far and away the best. Micro sites might as well turn on Xrumer, sites with no commercial aspiration might as well go pure white hat.
There is not a "one size fits all" solution
Scritty
