[ARVolund]

Greg Fowler, on 28 January 2012 - 18:20, said:

If you listen to Matt Cutt's who is head of the webspam team at Google and an Engineer for them, the best way to get links is for those that naturally link to your site.  I agree with that.  However, not everyone is going to link to your site and you have to be agressive in a way to appear in the search engine results.  For example, we are all in a forum, the forum provides links back to our site, based on Matt Cutt's ideology of getting links that could be considered spamming, in the eyes of Google.  However, it is not, if the owner of the forum has said, by the way you can have you links in the signature as long as you follow the forum rules.  Now, who is correct?  The forum owner or Matt?  The forum owner is allowed to do what he pleases with his site.  Just like any other website.  If have ten websites and I decide to place your link on them, who is to say that is different than those that naturally link to you.  There is a fine line between placing your links across the web, and webspamming place to appear higher in the search engine results.  The bottom line is this, and the point where I do agree with Matt Cutt's, is if you are placing links across the web without a long term benefit to your website, then you are spamming and the short term benefits will outweight the consequences.  Your site, as the owner, should have a strategic plan, short term, medium term, and long term to get it to where you want it to be in the search engine placements.  Believe me, I would love to have a great way to end up number one for a couple of keyword that I have in mind, but the fact of the matter is the search engine techology is changing everyday, what may have worked last month may not work now, and you have to keep testing and evaluting your methods to achieve the rankings.

You are trying to split hairs here.

Bottom line is if  you are "artificially"  increasing your backlink count then you are breaking the rules. How you do it is of  no consequence at all. You can tell yourself that you are only building high quality links manually or whatever kind of rationalization you need but you are still spamming.

What Matt is talking about is links that fulfill a need. Like someone has a problem or question in a thread and your site actually will help that person then posting the link would not be considered spam. That is quite different than adding a bunch of links to a sig even if a person contributes to the forum.

It is like the old story about a guy asking a women if she would sleep with him for a million dollars.

She says yes and then he asks her if she would do it for five bucks. She then says 'What kind of girl do you think I am"

His reply is "We have already determined what kind of girl you are now we are just haggling about the price"


Lets take you sig for example. Two of the links are relevant to the forum, one is borderline and the other has nothing to do with the topic of this forum at all and is nothing but spam. Just because Terry allows you to place four links in your sig does not make it any less spammy.

And just to be clear i am not putting down link spam at all. I do more than my fair of it and while I delete the spammers that hit the forum I have no real problem with what they are doing because I do it too.

What does bug me is people getting on their high horse and trying to convince me that their spamming is not really spamming because "insert lame reason here"

[Nanny Rose]

I think there is no such thing as white hat!

Supposed WH SEO's talking about ethical linkbuidling is just bullshit!

So what tools does the WH SEO have in his tool bag?

Directory submission and a linkbait attempt that even if it works (unlikely) won't bring in the anchor text the client needs! Anything else..... not so much!

Guest blog posting maybe would be used by a WH, but even then i'd still define that as not WH. How about linking from client sites the WH SEO controls. Is that really that different to a HPBL network.

Links cost money, and it's as simple as that.

WH SEO's can bullshit on about their ethics but they're full of shit. They pay for their links just like the rest of us. They just do it more subtly and spout on with a holier than thou attitude about BH SEO's!

Show me a site that's #1 with a great mix and a HUGE quantity of the kind of links that people use here, and then ask a WH SEO to get the #2 guy to #1 with his manual directory submissions and uncreative linkbait attempt in the toilet cleaning accesory niche......

[Lynch]

We kinda driffted off topic a bit.

The question was how can you do a valid test.

As for the high value rare links vs the cheap spammy ones you are right. A is much better than option B. But there's a loopwhole which I've been using and getting good results.

If you can't get high value links why not make them? Set up a free blog, post on it regularly (there are more than enough softwares out there), and build links to it. Don't have too many outbound and there you have problem solved.

[RobertR]

My personal definition of hats:

White Hat - anything that provides value for the end user -
example: Posting an informative article on your website and sharing that link on your facebook page

Grey Hat - anything that provides value for the end user but is also manipulating serach engines in some way
example: Posting an quality keyword rich article on a blog network with links to your website

Black Hat - anything that manipulates search engine ranking without regards if it has a value for the end user or not
example: posting a fake profile on .edu website with a link to money site that sells "the blue pill"

Hardcore Black Hat - Hacking an .edu profile by injecting a javascript redirect script to money site

Edited by robertvo, 30 January 2012 - 09:25.

[Ted]

Regarding the original question posed on the thread:

If you look at your own past experiences you may realize that you have already ran this experiment unknowingly.

Have you ever built a website that you pretty much only used gray hat techniques for like article marketing networks?   What were your results?

Have you ever built a good website that you kept pristine by only getting a handful of links that were earned because somebody liked what you built?

I have personally done both and can say that both work if you actually do them.  The one that works best is determined by each individual project and how well your site serves its audience.

If you are going to build a site with average content and try to monetize it through display advertising, then you aren't going to be able to get white hat links very easily.  You will get better results from gray hat.  In fact, you will probably only get top rankings if you use some kind of manipulative gray/black hat technique.

If you are going to build a site that provides the best solution possible for people in a niche that is under-served right now then you are probably going to be able to get good results doing white hat promotions like making contacts with other people in the field and collaborating on various value added trinkets for your target audience.  Or, if there is enough demand for what you are doing, and you do it well enough, those links and publicity will come completely on their own.

Think of it this way -- So far Terry is building a kick ass forum that is the best in its niche.  It is going to earn plenty of white hat links because of it.   If this was just an average forum with lots of spam posts mixed in with rare good stuff, then fewer people would link to it.

Most people (myself included) have to resort to gray/black hat techniques because they are incapable of building something perfect (or close to perfect) for their target audience.  

If we could build the best looking, most functional, perfectly targeted website for our carefully pinpointed target audience, then white hat methods would win hands down.  That is of course assuming that we weren't competing against a team of black hat master link ninjas.

[Eric Conklin]

JSP, on 05 November 2011 - 11:00, said:

Anyone who says they're "white hat" is most likely wrong.  At the VERY least, most of us are living on the "grey hat" line.  And honestly, most of us are closer to black hat than we think.

This is pretty much the truth, but the reason behind it is that Google has some pretty arbitrary standards for their webmaster guidelines.

Any sort of "Link scheme" that involves links for SEO and not to get traffic from a site is considered against the Google webmaster guidelines...

...which means just about every SEO service you can buy is a link scheme as long as the goal is to improve rankings.

Silly, but it's Google's standard. Fortunately it's not always enforced so they go easy on certain things, especially things that are as white hat as one can reasonably be or leave little to no foot print.

[rajthepositivelife]

RobertR, on 30 January 2012 - 09:24, said:

My personal definition of hats:

White Hat - anything that provides value for the end user -
example: Posting an informative article on your website and sharing that link on your facebook page

Grey Hat - anything that provides value for the end user but is also manipulating serach engines in some way
example: Posting an quality keyword rich article on a blog network with links to your website

Black Hat - anything that manipulates search engine ranking without regards if it has a value for the end user or not
example: posting a fake profile on .edu website with a link to money site that sells "the blue pill"

Hardcore Black Hat - Hacking an .edu profile by injecting a javascript redirect script to money site

I liked your Hardcore Blackhat example, lol

[dewaz]

sometimes little bit difficult to say an activity as blackhat. whitehat with more quantity normally consider as blackhat.
since google always updating their algoritm, what we need to do is recognze better and take advantages on that.

[Shaneypoo]

Meh.

With white hat, you need some amazing ideas.... that then drive tons of traffic naturally, with repeat visitors... etc.  Otheriwse, go gray or black.

[Jason camroon]

White hat and Black hat both are part of SEO techniques. An SEO tactic, technique or method is considered "white hat" if it meets the guidelines of the search engine and does not attempt to cheat it. White Hat SEO is not just about following guidelines, but to ensure that the contents of a search engine indexes and subsequently ranks is a user will see the same content.

In black hat seo, people use to more deceptive methods to try to to improve website ranking in short term.but search engine usually decry these method.in blcak hat seo, as a general rule, a method that sens a users to a pages that was different tothe described in the search is calles black hat. if search engines find find the any black hat method on your sites, then it can be penlize your site and also band your site in search engine.

[Fishingman1]

amandeep, on 26 January 2012 - 07:23, said:

Using black hat SEO to optimize your webpage is something you would be best advised to avoid. Black hat SEO may seem successful in a matter of days. But make no mistake ? more often than not, search engine bots will sniff out the unusual patterns and either start to ignore your website or completely ban it. Most website owners and administrators would want to steer clear of black hat SEO and only use white hat techniques.

Umm what would you consider to be WHT then?

[sanh]

Manual link building or automated doesn't categorize black-hat/white-hat.
Using unethical means no matter you did it manually or automatically is black-hat.

[merryscanlan]

White hat SEO is very important for your site because using white hat SEO you can follow the rules of the search engines. So using this way there is no negative effect on your site unlike black hat SEO in which you do not follow the rules and regulations of Search engines. But the ranking of white hat SEO is long term ranking in search engines whilst ranking using black hat SEO is very short time ranking.

[markoseo]

Well, actually, it is not easy to recognize and distinguish between black hat and white hat SEO since google just updated new version of Penguin. It is so smart now. Recognize spamming and vague methods. Then filter them into black list.

[sunrise]

White hat are the techniques allowed by the search engines, black hat are the methods can put your site in top very soon in search engine but the position will not be static.