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White Hat vs. Black HatHow to choose between them and transform risky tactics into
stable, long term wins
Rand Fishkin, CEO & Co-founder, SEOmoz
April 2011
At SEOmoz, we make SOFTWARE!! We don’t offer any consulting.
The Sweet Seduction of Black Hat SEO
http://www.google.com.au/search?q=university+tuition+fees
Weak
http://www.google.com.au/search?q=compare+mobile+phone+plans
Half these rank because of
spammy links. One cloaks
http://www.google.com.au/search?q=mens+suits+online
Some nasty link manipulation +
even redirects in these SERPs
http://www.google.com.au/search?q=car+insurance+companies
These results have a lot of link manipulation in virtually every
geography
http://www.google.com.au/search?q=car+insurance+companies
Bing is better than this in the US (most of the
time). Hopefully improved algos will roll
out here.
http://www.google.com.au/search?q=car+insurance+companies
Ugh… To be fair, Google has some junky stuff in their top 10 for this, too.
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/white-hat-seo-it-fing-works-12421#jtc138625 – here’s the comment
What Really Makes Me Mad:“You can do blatant, un-adulterated BH and hacking and google doesn't care. Don’t believe me? This blog has been hacked and the links all the way down the bottom are from people who have pushed their backlinks into compromised pre 2.9 wordpress blogs. There are thousands of these blogs out there and you force all of them to accept your backlinks! Instant 1st page position for any keyword. Here is a challenge to the SEOMOZ community – Let’s see if you can get any of the sites in the links down the bottom removed from SERPs by letting Google know. I bet you can't! Here is the link check it out yourself:
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/white-hat-seo-it-fing-works-12421 - read this post for more
WebSpam Sucks
Novice SEOs see it and think
“I guess that’s how SEO is done.”
Searchers see it and trust Bing + Google less, meaning
less opportunity for everyone in search/web marketing.
Brand marketers, developers and executives see it and
presume SEO is just a manipulative dark art.
Why Choose White Hat?
I received more than 30 sites in reply, unfortunately, more than a few weren’t using entirely white hat tactics. Those that were white hat, though, got a link + exposure.
#1: You’ve Got Nothing to Hide
Every time Google removes spam from their index, dozens to hundreds of posts appear - http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Webmasters/label?lid=41234c84d9491af8&hl=en – read some of the horror stories of webmasters and you’ll never want to spam again.
#2: No Long-Term Risk
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/traffic-source-diversity-is-essential-for-successful-seo
#3: Every Action Builds Marketing Value
(outside of just SEO)
SEO makes up ~35% of SEOmoz’s traffic
Links that send traffic are highly likely to be
passing SEO value, too.
12 Black Hat Tactics Transformed into
Long Term, White Hat Wins
Searching Google or Bing for “SEO Link Directory” brings up lots of these. The smart black hats know which ones will help your site vs. hurt it through testing. New SEOs, sadly, take the brunt of the penalties.
#1B: Crappy, Pay-to-List Directories
Try “edu” / “org” as the site modifiers, or terms like “links,” “directory,” “world wide web,” or “suggested sites” (get creative, too – this list can help: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/long-list-of-link-searches
#1W: Awesome Resource Lists
Just apply some broad keywords, change up
the TLD extension, and you can find awesome
lists in any sector.
James probably should have checked out the site a bit more; the sidebar notes that this particular blogger is married to me
#2B: Email Requests to Rent Links
Starting with connections and reciprocation on social media is a great way to build a relationship prior to requesting content contribution. It’s more likely to get a yes, too.
#2W: Email Offers to Create Content
Tragically, despite Wordpress’ efforts to kill sponsored themes, they persist in all shapes and forms. This blog post explains: http://angelanatcus.com/sponsor-a-wordpress-theme-and-drive-traffic-to-your-site/
#3B: Sponsored Wordpress Theme Links
You don’t even need to build something necessarily relevant to your site! If you just contribute a useful plugin, you will earn authentic links from folks who appreciate it.
#3W: Useful Wordpress Plugins
That’s Bob Rains, a former black hat and crazy smart SEO. He explained on a panel in Munich how fake Twitter accounts brought value. I think he could have done even better with white hat ones
#4B: Fake Twitter Accounts to Tweet/RT Links
Business.com built this account for one of their many blogs by sharing good, relevant updates on the topic. Now it’s got 14K+ followers and can powerfully influence traffic to their own site, too.
#4W: Build Highly Followed, Real Twitter Accounts
When I was in Italy, I noticed that many, many sites there seem to like the sitewide footers with anchor text as a linking tactic. Unfortunately, these are often devalued.
#5B: Sitewide Footer Links
#5W: Sitewide Links to a Partner Page
Instead of a direct link without much context, we link to a page explaining our relationship and why we’re endorsing this
company. We’ve done this in the past with all our partnerships, and CTR is often higher!
This comes via Matt Cutts’ blog. It’s pretty hard to find cloaked text this basic in Google’s index anymore, though more “sophisticated” stuff still appears on occasion.
#6B: Cloaking Text on a Page
Via the Moz Features Page: http://www.seomoz.org/features
#6W: Make that Content Visible in a CSS Tab
The left/right arrows and top menu control which content to
display, but it’s by no means “hidden” or “cloaked.”
Luckily, from what I bothered to check, not many of these seem to be doing well because of it. And who knows? Maybe limo sites just make lots of friends.
#7B: Reciprocal Link Pages
C’mon! Seriously?! Who actually still calls their
reciprocal link page “link-partners.htm?”
Testimonial rule via the always excellent and greatly missed Kathy Sierra: http://headrush.typepad.com/creating_passionate_users/2006/02/rethinking_test.html
#7W: Give + Receive Testimonials
Make sure to send a testimonial that follows this rule, includes your full
name, title, link and a photo.
When you see links like this, then search for those keywords and see the target websites rank it’s the worst feeling. No way to know for sure if these are the links that are putting them there, but it bums white hats out every time.
#8B: Automated Link Drop Spam
A comment on Mark Suster’s blog led to a post, links + tweets from him, and an in-person breakfast in Los Angeles. It’s a perfect example of how authentic web marketing wins more than just SEO.
#8W: Authentic Comment Marketing
Line of text
#9B: Falsified Facebook “Like” Buttons
Some nefarious black hats will make the Facebook “like” button trigger from
clicks on other parts of the page. Watch your status bar to be sure of what
you’re clicking when browsing sketchy portions of the web.
Screenshot from http://unbounce.com/blog/ which just rocks in general and should be read by every organic web marketer.
#9W: Earn Shares! They Can’t Be Gamed,
But They’re Way More Powerful
http:/googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/06/our-new-search-index-caffeine.htmlAlthough voters thought Twitter data / tweets to URLs were more influential, Facebook’s metrics are substantially better correlated with rankings. Time to get more FB Shares!
Correlation of Social Media-Based Factors(data via Topsy API & Google Buzz API)
Amazing: Facebook Shares is our single highest
correlated metric with higher Google rankings.
“Spinning” is where sites re-write a single piece of content using software or low cost writers dozens-hundreds of times and publish all over the web to get links or visits.
#10B: Article “Spinning”
The creative commons licensing system can work very well for some folks http://creativecommons.org/choose/ – or you can create your own license rules.
#10W: Content Syndication
Because we syndicate our full content RSS feed with absolute links
(not relative) back to our site, we benefit from dozens of re-publishers
of our work with every post!
I don’t understand why anyone even does this anymore. It’s such a high risk, low return behavior, and it’s so rare that there’s value in showing different content to bots vs. users.
#11B: Cloaking for Search Bots
UMMM… I CAN TOTALLY SEE YOU THERE
DUDE.
Always make sure that the default, search visitor, non-logged-in experience matches what search engines see, or you could still fall foul of cloaking guidelines.
#11W: Use Cookies/Logins to Show
Varied Content Based on Behavior
Amazon knows a lot about me, so they can give me a
richer experience when I visit
#12B: Using Link Brokers
#12B: Costs of “Buying” Links
40 Link Rental Sources (relatively few)
Average Price of $300/month (that’s low, BTW)
$300 * 40 * 12 = $144,000/year
What else could I do with that money?
Just today, he created an eBook of an article using Themeforest + other tools and then blogged about how anyone can do it: http://unbounce.com/social-media/how-i-created-a-viral-ebook-landing-page-for-8-using-themeforest-paywithatweet-kissinsights-and-unbounce/
#12W: Hire a Director of Inbound MarketingWrites awesome, link-worthy blog posts
Guest posts for Unbounce on other sites
Builds gorgeous infographics that spread
Answers questions on Q+A sites
Has built a Twitter account w/ 20K+ followers
Runs their FB page w/ 4K+ fans
We need to stop pretending that black hat is
OK. It hurts our entire industry’s opportunity,
and it’s a lazy, short-term approach to
building a business on the web.
Q+A
Rand Fishkin, CEO & Co-Founder, SEOmoz
• Twitter: @randfish
• Blog: www.seomoz.org/blog
• Email: [email protected]
You can now try SEOmoz PRO Free!http://www.seomoz.org/freetrial