I learned a little bit about Black Hat today and I’m glad
For those of you interested in knowing, I was really hesitant to post this as a Meetup, but I did for a reason. I believe that in order to push the limits on your own capabilities, it’s important to be aware of your surroundings and understand the whole picture. I like white hat and I will continue to be a white hat. But there is a lot of value in knowing where the line is drawn and what’s on the other side of the line.
I want to use this blog post to pass on what I’ve learned. Here was the original Meetup description:
These short Events tomorrow will be worth your while everyone!
I met with the two speakers today, and I believe that they can offer you all value
John Reighard – former Silicon Valley Exec turned Business Acceleration Consultant will provide all of you with a personal Natural Genius Report. You will discover your gifts. The SWOT Analysis is for Business Owners. It analyzes your Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats.
Viktor Grant – he has been working on SEO for over 16 years. The tool he will show you will help you rank higher
RSVP on this Meetup and Sign up here: http://momentumnow.eventbrite.com/
SWOT Analysis, DISC reports, business talk and empower network
First of all, I want to get a few things out of the way. The Swot analysis and Disc test stuff was cool. I was not impressed with the empower network stuff because I believe in taking ownership of your website. I’m not going to elaborate on this stuff because I want to focus on the SEO. I just wanted to mention those other things since they were part of the experience.
The godfather of Black Hat SEO
That’s what he calls himself anyway. I’m not sure if I should mention his name so I’m not going to. Anyways, it was his presentation that I was really interested in today. Set aside philosophical differences, this guy is smart. There is not doubt there.
He started in Black Hat SEO about 16 years ago manipulating the system to dominate search queries in Lycos, alta vista, and hot bot.
Here are a few items discussed:
WordPress was built on a foundation of Black Hat type of structures: I’ll be honest. I don’t understand this. Anyone?
Document Inception: This is supposedly the date (age) when Google first crawled the site. He noted how important it is to be using an aged domain and how your domain categorization is stamped forever. I don’t think the age is important. I think I’ll take Matt’s word on this:
As far as the categorization goes, the guy mentioned that Google will categorize your domain and you have that “stamp” forever. This is difficult for me to believe. Businesses can change, domains can be bought and sold, and I would think that Google would be able to re-categorize domains it they are even categorized to begin with. I looked into this and didn’t find much. If anyone is knowledgeable on this, please post some comments.
Posting static content on old domains and posting fresh content (blogs) on WordPress to take advantage of domain age and Black Hat SEO on WordPress: Well, domain age doesn’t matter and WordPress being Black Hat, I don’t know. Please someone comment!
Posting many links via “friends and family” to get the red flag to raise so that Google will have a human reviewer look at the site: I’m not sure what to think of this one. I don’t like the idea. Remember, if you’re doing it for SEO, don’t do it.
Posting on sites with high alexa rating and high page rank will get your content to rank: Again, content is what gets your content to rank. You can be the number one spot with low page rank. The two are related but do not have to be hand in hand. Alexa global traffic does not matter to you when you are after a specific audience. You can have a low alexa rating but still get more relevant traffic to a niche blog post than a high rated site’s niche blog post.
Conclusion on Black Hat
Black Hat sounds complicated and feels wrong. White Hat is easy to understand and good for the long term. Bottom line is that if it’s good for the user, it’s good for Google.
By Scott True
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