[aramyus]

This post refers to this other post

http://trafficplanet.com/topic/253-why-im-turning-my-back-on-blackgreyhat-seo/page__p__2140#entry2140

Quote

For 3 months, I have used 'white hat practices' on a site, and suddently, my G traffic has doubled (from 500 to 1000 per day) on the October 14th update. It's very encouraging.

White hat actions performed during the summer:

- a viral ebook (10-20 semi-competitors sharing one of their best tips. The ebook is then distributed by all partners)

- (sincere) blog commenting on high traffic sites. About 1 comment per day for 2 months. Most blogs were nofollow

- Guest blogging - about one per week.  We failed to be in high trust rank blogs, only in medium-low trust rank

- Boosting all external links obtained with about 3/5 links from a blog network (that's grey hat)

Results:  traffic doubled overnight from 500 to 1000 visitors per day during an algo update (14 october)

[peter25k]

Great tips I will try to implement some of the tips you've shared. Congratulation on your traffic boost.

[Education Masters]

I always believe in White Hat. You don't know when Google updates its algorithm, and kicks your website from the web.

Good content is the key because other people will also link it. (Means they do link building for you! It's an amazing strategy for the long run.)

Edited by Education Masters, 13 December 2011 - 20:46.

[nanexo]

White hat efforts like article marketing and viral e-Books/reports never fail to work. Then again there is the issue of ROI and all that, but bottomline, for someone who is just starting out and want to test the waters, you can't go wrong with white hat practices.

[Fitgal]

aramyus, on 23 October 2011 - 01:42, said:

This post refers to this other post

http://trafficplanet.com/topic/253-why-im-turning-my-back-on-blackgreyhat-seo/page__p__2140#entry2140




White hat actions performed during the summer:

- a viral ebook (10-20 semi-competitors sharing one of their best tips. The ebook is then distributed by all partners)

- (sincere) blog commenting on high traffic sites. About 1 comment per day for 2 months. Most blogs were nofollow

- Guest blogging - about one per week.  We failed to be in high trust rank blogs, only in medium-low trust rank

- Boosting all external links obtained with about 3/5 links from a blog network (that's grey hat)

Results:  traffic doubled overnight from 500 to 1000 visitors per day during an algo update (14 october)

Did you use KEYWORD NAME for your blog commenting? Very interesting on the viral ebook. Great idea for non - Google traffic or is it online also?

[TrafficDude]

I hope you realize that since you're combining white hat and grey hat, your experiment is pretty much useless and doesn't suggest that "white hat" is effective, only that your process was effective for your nice

[Andrew Kamide]

i agree with traffic dude.... there are many ways to get better results but saying that it is just whie hat is not correct. the procedure u used works, thats all that matters. and that its not black hat lol

[junkdna]

It will be very difficult to scale that. Try to delegate honest and useful blog commenting and you'll see what I am trying to say.

[angelus]

Writing good content and expecting real people to link to you is an awesome strategy if you have a year or two worth of patience. It could work relatively fast for generic keyword sites. But who talks about, "cheap toyotas for sale in Wisconsin" and link to you with that anchor tag. It will take years before Google clears the black hat "crap" out of the way before carrying you to the top as a "respected" web site. Not to mention some of those guys write good content too, so the only difference will be off page.

[junkdna]

This might be anecdotal, but a friend of mine was doing guest blogging in e-cig market, 6 to 8 hours per day and he was making about $1,500 per month. He subscribed to Google Alerts, and this service was streaming fresh news to him on hourly basis. So he just went around blogs and wrote fresh comments interpreting those news.

Now, he is really nice guy and friendly and all like that. But he eventually had to give up, because he could not scale what he was doing.

I am now in the exactly the same market as he was. I am using just gray SEO and I am already making 4 times as much as him, because with gray SEO one can scale up as much as he likes.

I am not saying that super-white SEO doesn't work, but it is just impossible to scale-up and expensive to implement.

Edited by junkdna, 27 December 2011 - 05:28.

[montoyanb]

aramyus, on 23 October 2011 - 01:42, said:

This post refers to this other post

http://trafficplanet.com/topic/253-why-im-turning-my-back-on-blackgreyhat-seo/page__p__2140#entry2140




White hat actions performed during the summer:

- a viral ebook (10-20 semi-competitors sharing one of their best tips. The ebook is then distributed by all partners)

- (sincere) blog commenting on high traffic sites. About 1 comment per day for 2 months. Most blogs were nofollow

- Guest blogging - about one per week.  We failed to be in high trust rank blogs, only in medium-low trust rank

- Boosting all external links obtained with about 3/5 links from a blog network (that's grey hat)

Results:  traffic doubled overnight from 500 to 1000 visitors per day during an algo update (14 october)

I must say im more of BH type of person. Your sugestions are really good and sound, but what if you implement them, plus some blackhat tactics. I think you would be getting far more traffic this way. I know this is white hat subforum but still...

[montoyanb]

junkdna, on 27 December 2011 - 05:26, said:

This might be anecdotal, but a friend of mine was doing guest blogging in e-cig market, 6 to 8 hours per day and he was making about $1,500 per month. He subscribed to Google Alerts, and this service was streaming fresh news to him on hourly basis. So he just went around blogs and wrote fresh comments interpreting those news.

Now, he is really nice guy and friendly and all like that. But he eventually had to give up, because he could not scale what he was doing.

I am now in the exactly the same market as he was. I am using just gray SEO and I am already making 4 times as much as him, because with gray SEO one can scale up as much as he likes.

I am not saying that super-white SEO doesn't work, but it is just impossible to scale-up and expensive to implement.

Why not? He could hire someone from India, Pakistan or some other country from Asia to post comments for him.

[Cloudbacklinks]

Its definitely possible to scale up blog comments just the quality and price may be conflicting. Maybe a VA to do the work as montonyanb first recommended.

[brandonbaker]

junkdna, on 27 December 2011 - 05:26, said:

This might be anecdotal, but a friend of mine was doing guest blogging in e-cig market, 6 to 8 hours per day and he was making about $1,500 per month. He subscribed to Google Alerts, and this service was streaming fresh news to him on hourly basis. So he just went around blogs and wrote fresh comments interpreting those news.

Now, he is really nice guy and friendly and all like that. But he eventually had to give up, because he could not scale what he was doing.

I am now in the exactly the same market as he was. I am using just gray SEO and I am already making 4 times as much as him, because with gray SEO one can scale up as much as he likes.

I am not saying that super-white SEO doesn't work, but it is just impossible to scale-up and expensive to implement.

Exactly. And not just that, but why exactly is pure white hat so desirable in the first place? I wasn't aware that SEO was supposed to be some kind of Public Display of Integrity. I hate webspam as much as the next guy but the fact is that 99% of webspam will never be seen by human eyes. It's not there for human eyes--that's the point. It's there for Googlebot. People's lives won't be affected by most of what we call webspam, so why do we strive so hard to keep to this strict code of "white hat SEO"?

And even if you do try, someone else will grey-hat the $#!% out of you anyway and take all your profit.

White hat isn't worth it--no, not even for the long term. Black hat isn't worth it either. The sweet spot is somewhere in between, and figuring out exactly where to live between the two extremes is my idea of SEO.

[LLD]

Pilot, on 02 January 2012 - 20:39, said:

White hat isn't worth it--no, not even for the long term. Black hat isn't worth it either. The sweet spot is somewhere in between, and figuring out exactly where to live between the two extremes is my idea of SEO.

Agree'd. There is that little sweet spot right in between, its just a case of split a/b testing before pushing live to your money making sites... Good luck all.

[Ohioquotes]

I'm all white hat as well. I have just started some guest-blogging. Not enough time for one per week but hopefully it will pick up.

[nanexo]

I agree aramyus post. sharing Ebook, Blog commenting, Guest blogging really increase traffic. Social networking also help for doubled traffic.

[Alan]

I think the main difference is the site that you're doing SEO for. If you're doing SEO for client websites like brick and mortar businesses or any other company / brand, then the first rule is do no harm. Yes you can test stuff on micro-sites before doing anything black for the client but what if you get dinged on the next update. You have no way of knowing until that update comes so with client work, you have to be a little more careful.

Now, if you're working on your own affiliate, Adsense, CPA, or what ever sites, then you can push the envelope a little more (even on your money site) because at the end of the day, it's your site and you're prepared to take that risk.

[RobertR]

Hi Aramyus,
congrats for your nice results!

However I am quite sceptical when it comes to pure white hat.
I think it's little naive to think that pure white hat would outperform all your competitors involved with grey/black hat.
Try to replicate those white hat results with a tougher niche like a "weight loss" and see if that works

I myself use a combination of white, grey and black hat for maximum results.

White hat on money site, grey hat on sites pointing to money site (2nd level) and black hat on sites pointing to sites pointing to money sites (3rd level)
This has been working pretty well for last 5 years.

I like hats of all colors!

[trafficwiz52]

It just goes to show that white hat techniques do work, it's easy to get caught up in the world of black hat, but it is very risky to your site. Although some black hat strategies do work, this post is a great reminder that you can make things work purely by using white hat traffic tactics.