Screwing the competition?

I've been reading about SEO for a while now, white, gray, black hat techniques etc, but I'm starting a business right now and start to learn more seriously.
I caught myself wondering, I can ruin my website by doing black hat stuff.
So what if I do it to the competitions website?
It may be a silly question but seems plausible to me.
Say I begin to spread competition's link through shitty sites in a manner thats obviously spam to google.
Competition will be penalized and I'll benefit from it? :smashfrea

Why would you want to do that? It is called Karma - what goes around comes around - don't do that. Just work to build your site the right way. They have a family to support like everyone else. Don't play dirty when it comes to other peoples sites...just out rank them in the game of SEO - but don't intentionally harm someone. Not cool at all.

Yes they could be penalized, however they might bounce back stronger than ever... Concentrate on your own sites first!

I'm not planning to do that. It just seemed very unfair to me and I wondered if people actually do it. You work hard to be on top and people can screw it easily.

lord_ said:

I've been reading about SEO for a while now, white, gray, black hat techniques etc, but I'm starting a business right now and start to learn more seriously.
I caught myself wondering, I can ruin my website by doing black hat stuff.
So what if I do it to the competitions website?
It may be a silly question but seems plausible to me.
Say I begin to spread competition's link through shitty sites in a manner thats obviously spam to google.
Competition will be penalized and I'll benefit from it? :smashfrea

Click to expand...

Without fail somebody asks this question once per week.

This is a blackhat forum. What you are asking about is not a BH technique it is a LLT technique.

lord_ said:

I'm not planning to do that. It just seemed very unfair to me and I wondered if people actually do it. You work hard to be on top and people can screw it easily.

Click to expand...

Doctor, my friend has erectile dysfunction......

lord_ said:

I've been reading about SEO for a while now, white, gray, black hat techniques etc, but I'm starting a business right now and start to learn more seriously.
I caught myself wondering, I can ruin my website by doing black hat stuff.
So what if I do it to the competitions website?
It may be a silly question but seems plausible to me.
Say I begin to spread competition's link through shitty sites in a manner thats obviously spam to google.
Competition will be penalized and I'll benefit from it? :smashfrea

Click to expand...

That is like, not allowed to be discussed as a serious strategy around here, for obvious reasons. It is very much illegal to actively do this to hurt someones website.

Will you be caught with the right proxies? Unlikely. Could it work? Absolutely. Matt himself has admitted this, though they do have checks in place to make this hard. It will depend on what site you're trying to fuck up. Older websites and authority-like websites will be unlikely to be hurt by spammy links. To fuck them over, the trick would be to purchase paid links and then alert Google to them gaming the system, and wait for a penalty. You risk Google letting them get away with it, because Google doesn't catch everyone. You might help them, you might hurt them, you might do nothing, but ultimately you paid for that link to be there.

Neutral information there, do with it what you wish.