expertSEM

You’ve heard the terms tossed around when discussing SEO tactics, one with a positive connotation and one with a negative. Naturally, white hat is the angelic one, describing SEO techniques that are viewed as ethical by the search engines and thus awarded long-term ranking. Menacing black hat SEO uses less acceptable, and some might argue, shady tactics to get a page to pop to the top of listings in a very short period of time.

Black Hat / White Hat SEO panelists (left to right): Andrew Beckman, Scott Polk, Frank Watson, Dave Snyder, Daron Babin

The black hat/white hat SEO session took place at the Affiliate Conference in our fair city of Denver last week. And our very own Andrew Beckman spoke on the panel, along with Scott Polk of Bruce Clay, Frank Watson (Kangamurra Media) and Dave Snyder (Search & Social). Moderators Daron Babin (Webmaster Radio co-founder and one of the major forces behind the conference) and Marc Lesnick (AffEuro) assigned each panelists a color. Andrew was crowned with a white hat, Scott was a hazy gray, Dave was charcoal and Frank was jet black. Each panelist was asked to play that part, regardless of how angelic or menacing they practice SEO in real life.

As you can imagine in a panel of this stature, guys who have been doing this since the dawn of SEO times, the discussion was animated, entertaining, somewhat scandalous at times and incredibly informative throughout. I didn’t have my laptop so I was furiously scribbling one liner after one lifer from all panelists. I hope that I give proper credit to what each panelist said and accurately portray the role they were playing; my apologies if I miss assign any lines.

First, Daron and Dave explained that black hat, while definitely not the moral high ground, is not illegal. Black hat is simply another way to automate a time-consuming process, something we are definitely not opposed to in other areas of marketing and life in general. Additionally, Daron explained how black hat is actually helping the engines fine tune results and provide a better service for users—black hat tactics reveal weaknesses and holes in the algorithms that the search engines can later fix. In fact, it’s common practice for all engines to invite black hats in to kick around the algos to locate these holes.

Dave went on the state that even though the engines claim you get quality links by creating great content, putting it out there and waiting for others to link to it, it doesn’t really work that way—sometimes, he stated, you have to get dirty. And Scott exposed a hard truth—certain verticals, such as gambling, pharma, adult and some financial industries, must use black hat tactics because the competition is so stiff.

Andrew Beckman

Andrew chimed in with his white hat advice; you must plan ahead—6 to 8 months, at least—for terms you want to rank on. Consider future sales, promos and/or product rollouts and build out an SEO strategy well in advance. He claimed that you cannot rank on single term phrases in a short time period—long-term is the way to go since the competition is less and traffic is typically more qualified.

The other panelists disagreed, stating that there are numerous ways to pop on a single term, but they should be used with caution. All panelists agreed that black hats may see success quickly, but that it is fleeting. Daron stated that aggressive black hats will self implode in about three to eight weeks and others piped in that you could even get your domain banned for good if caught. And since all link building is technically against the rules, getting caught is highly probable. Marc explained how many SEO pros will start off black hat for an initial pop, then turn white hat for longevity.

SEO warfare was a hot topic—“borrowing” competitors ranking and what to do in case someone snags your search results. Daron boldly stated that if you are not getting beat up, you’re not playing in a competitive enough area and that he welcomes these battles. But all agreed that you have to choose these battles because you certainly don’t want lawyers from huge corporations knocking at your door, trying to shut down your business and seize your house, which is a possibility and something these panelists have seen happen before (to others, of course!). However, while Daron agreed that black hat can lead to messy legal situations, he stated that “unless a cease and desist is court ordered, it means nothing.”

Daron when on to explain how he has black hated the hell out of a domain, then 301redirected the links to a client’s site. This removed the risk to the client, and still allowed them to take advantage of quick ranking strategies.

Frank, Scott and Dave talked about reverse engineering links from competitor sites. They discussed using tools to replicate competitor search rankings and applying them to another site. Frank explained one strategy for thwarting competitors—find out who they are trying to get links from, call up the site owner and talk them into linking to your site instead.

Frank also touched on Google Business Center, one service that provides local map listings. He urged all business owners to sign up as it is a simple way to rank on the engines and get exposure without actually using SEO tactics on your site.

Andrew answers a questions from the crowd while (L to R) Daron Babin, Marc Lesnick and Scott Polk listen in.

An audience member asked the panel to talk about podcasts and video. White Hatters Scott and Andrew said they optimize the pages themselves, not necessarily the media files. Daron explained how to ethically optimize podcasts—place a transcription of every word in the ID3 tag. This way it is completely crawlable by the engines and he has never run into duplicate content issues with an actual web page with the transcription because the ID3 tags are viewed differently then web content. And audience member pointed out that this is also ADA compliant, so it can be seen as white hat all the way.

The moral of the story—black hat is not for the faint of heart. Scott stressed that it is all about risk; it can be lots of fun, but you absolutely should not do it for your clients (and even for yourself) if you are not a seasoned veteran that knows exactly what you are doing. Dave emphasized quality over quantity—a handful of credible links are worth more than thousands of shady ones. And if your links are quality white hat, it can be difficult, if not impossible, to be knocked out of rankings by black hat strategies.

Whether they are black hat or white hat in real life, these panelists are certainly old hat at SEO and had some strong opinions and great advice. The session, what Daron summed up as, “Shades of Gray,” was broadcast live on Webmaster Radio. Check out this entertaining and enlightening session here.