Well, first and foremost I base it on what Google tells us. It's remarkably easy to do internet marketing that Google likes if you actually pay attention to what they say, and they've been very clear about this stuff. Since this particular forum is a white hat forum, I figure that must be appropriate here, no?
Matt Cutts told Danny Sullivan at
Search Engine Watch that, "Penguin was designed to tackle 'the stuff in the middle;' between fantastic, high quality content and spam. Panda was all about spam, but the need for Penguin arose from this middle ground. 'It does demote web results, but it's an algorithmic change, not a penalty. It's yet another signal among over 200 signals we look at,' he said."
We also know that Google has been sending what some sarcastically call "love letters" to some webmasters' Google Webmaster Tools accounts, telling them that they detected linking structures to their sites that were unnatural. The "love letter" references
Google Webmaster Guidelines, which state (among other things): "Don't
participate in link schemes designed to increase your site's ranking or PageRank. In particular, avoid links to web spammers or 'bad neighborhoods' on the web, as your own ranking may be affected adversely by those links." Examples they cite include:
- Links intended to manipulate PageRank
- Links to web spammers or bad neighborhoods on the web
- Excessive reciprocal links or excessive link exchanging ("Link to me and I'll link to you.")
- Buying or selling links that pass PageRank
Now, I don't know how much more specific information you want, but that seems pretty specific to me.
Further, there is the evidence that comes from the advice of all the leading SEO gurus: Danny Sullivan, Bruce Clay, SEOMoz, SEO BrainTrust, and on and on.
Now it's my turn to return the favor to you. What's your evidence that the "gray area" is safe? Because as far as I can tell, it's not safe. Even those who haven't been caught yet will likely get caught over time as Penguin gets further refined. The same pattern happened with Panda. How many Panda updates have there been since February 2011? I've lost count, but I'm pretty sure there are dozens of them.
Further, the gray area is not cheap. This is the biggest myth of all. People spend and invest huge amounts of time, money, and energy taking all kinds of short cuts instead of building lots of great content. Then, eventually, Google shoots them down and they have to start all over again. In addition to justifying the "gray area", would you please explain how this is a good business model? Because frankly I don't see it.
Worst of all, the gray area isn't even very effective, unless you do it in huge amounts, and that's when you're more likely to get caught. I dabbled in it last year based on what I read here. The most positive results I ever saw were modest improvements that didn't last.
By the way, I like your screen name. I don't know if you picked it because of Ludwig von Mises, but if you did, you picked a good economics guru.
