When I talk about black hat and automation tools, people on other forums or in real life assume that we are doing dirty business. But I think most people are already doing black hat SEO, even if you create backlinks (profile backlinks etc.) manually one by one, that's black hat SEO too, you are just trying to manipulate/control google bots. And without backlinks, it's almost impossible to get good rankings on search engines. I got lots of negative REP on other SEO / marketing / programming forums just because I talked about automation tools. These kind of tools are just facilitating our business.
Trust me, this is never going away. I actually had a law-suit once where someone claimed that white-hat linkbuilding was the 'legal' way to do it. When my attorney asked if a third party was doing the linkbuilding, and if he paid for it, the witness said 'yes'.
We then casually showed him the Google Guidelines where it clearly states that buying links, buying services that create links, or having links made in exchange for goods or services is prohibited. People get those things mixed up all the time. White-hat, black-hat, guidelines, 'the best way' - all subjective. And sidestepping that, it's never illegal by common law - it's Google's law!
It's a matter of style, nothing else. If you want results fast, cheap and ready to take risks, Blackhat's the way to go. If you want to minimize risks then by all means do it manually - and at least know it's still 'illegal' in Google's eyes. You're always going to be scolded by those that think they know best. Just ignore them, and don't talk about your methods in public. Let your clients know, explain to them (in detail) the risks involved and let them decide based on that.
Blackhat, as the name implies, has a negative connotation. It was the bad-guy in Westerns. What are you going to do? ;-)
In the end you're going to get hate if you're doing something faster, cheaper and better than someone else. No matter the business you're in. And they will always try to bring you down or laugh at you when you fail. Let them
You're obviously drawn to the
dark side. Enjoy it! It's a cat and mouse game. Be smart, get caught, get smarter - thrive. And always, always, enjoy the process
