Is Whitehat SEO Still Working

[PhilipSEO]

The official Google ideology of "create great content and people will naturally want to link to it" would be great if it actually worked. Does it? Somewhat, but not really, not as well as it is claimed. Don't take my word for it, consider what these other two experts have been thinking recently.

Michal Gray has experimented with following Google's advice, and he got frustrated:
I Listened to Google and I Failed

Rand Fishkin rants about the success of spam in the current search results:
SEOmoz | I'm Getting More Worried about the Effectiveness of Webspam

I found these articles thought-provoking and wanted to share them.

[McBrett]

Thought provoking post as usual Phillip.

Personally I'm tired of the white hat VS black hat labeling that SEOs get.

On a side note, when are you going to complete those interview questions I sent you?

I'm really interested in hearing what you have to say and I think others are too.

[PhilipSEO]

Originally Posted by McBrett

I'm really interested in hearing what you have to say and I think others are too.

Hopefully over the weekend, my friend. Thank you for your patience!

[McBrett]

LOL Oh yeah, I'm calling you out on the WF.

[Raptors]

If you want to have a long term ecommerce website, would it be better to use purely white hat seo or grey hat (I know I don't want to do black hat).

[Rock Solid]

It's all about outsourcing, whitehat works great if someone else does it for you and spends their time doing it. You can make great money online with time/effort. Especially with the time/effort of 10+ people ;D

[marieluy143]

Disagree, for stable performance of the website,, you should engaged with WHITE HAT SEO...

[Dellco]

Whitehat is still working, but takes a very long time to finally arrive there.

Yes, quality content is important, but usually, people don't want to link to you even if you have really great content, UNLESS you give them the impression that you are poor, no money, downtrodden....then maybe, you will get links with a great site (naturally).And if you are their friend, of course.

The problem with Adsense though is....

For sites with Adsense on them, high quality PR sites will not link to you especially if they themselves are not using Adsense. Even Dmoz mostly likes non Adsense sites no matter how great your site is....

But if you get up there in the SERPs with a great site, Adsense or not, people will grudgingly start linking to you.....

And note: My understanding of great site is a site where you really know your subject matter and make it obvious on your site, not a bull****ter as most "niche" sites are, nowadays.

And yes, low quality sites are all up there in the top SERPs, for many of them, the owners hardly know a thing about their subject matter. They SEOed their way to the top.

[jazbo]

It works, but in this age of mass automation and outsourcing, the "real" content is being swamped. However, Googles "pure" internet never has been and never will be a reality anywhere else than in their control freak minds.

Great links though, had not seen those posts (must check my RSS reader more often...), they confirm what a lot of us have been saying - listen to Google and stay whitehat and you fall on your arse 9 times out of 10.

[bmoney76]

Originally Posted by Raptors

If you want to have a long term ecommerce website, would it be better to use purely white hat seo or grey hat (I know I don't want to do black hat).

One thing you could do is create a different content website(s) that was related to your ecommerce site, and get that site to rank well for all the niche keywords. Then drive your visitors from that site to your ecommerce site when they are ready to buy. You would pretty much be your own personal affiliate if that makes sense.

[millerb7]

No different than having a "homepage" you made in wordpres or joomla or the like and ranking that up for keywords, then linking that site as your "homepage" to your e-commerce site... that's actually the exact thing I'm in the process of doing for a big customer.

Couple $100k/year small business... only issue I'm having is he's starting from scratch on his website and e-commerce.... good and bad.

Good: I get to do the SEO from the ground up and build the e-commerce so I know everything about everything.

Bad: It's brand spanking new, so it's going to take time to get some quality backlinks and get up in the SERPS


WHITEHAT seo better still work! haha... that's all I'm using. Going for the long-haul here.

[vikramd]

My friend blogs about technology (specifically virtualization for a particular unix platform). His content is top notch and he ranks all over the place for just about every imaginable keyword.

He's in a niche, he's got great content and gets decent content. He has no idea what SEO is, no interest in learning.

How did he get to the top?

1. Participating in technical forums.
2. Submitting his site to directories.
3. Blog posting (relevant stuff) to other people's blogs.

He has no adsense and has no interest in putting up ads on his site. It's just personal promotion (it gets him consulting gigs, writing gigs etc..).

So yeah - the "white hat" approach works fine.

"white hat" IMO is also a subjective term because Google has never been consistent about stuff in this area.

If you consider white hat to be blog commenting, guest blogging, article marketing, content syndication - then yeah. Those techniques work fine too.

Honestly - the most effective way to do this is to buy links discretely. Just email the people (skip the link exchanges) and ask for a link or text ad that contains a do-follow link.

If you're paranoid - find people in your niche that are clueless about marketing & SEO.

There's no way Google can figure out you did this (since you're avoiding the link exchanges etc.).

[dburk]

Hi Phillip,

Those are two great linkbait articles. As linkbait, they are intended to be somewhat controversial and written to appeal to their targeted audience on an emotional bases. I'm sure that played a role in your decision to link to them from here.

I think people tend to take what Google's engineers say and extrapolate the meaning to fit whatever they felt they heard. While you will hear them mention specific methods you should avoid, you never hear them say "don't promote your website." They do encourage natural backlinks, but they never say to rely on them exclusively. They say to build content that folks will want to link to and you will not have to work as hard to promote your website.

Does anyone really think that is bad advice?

I'm sure that the authors of those two articles understand that Google doesn't discourage the promotion of your website, they just couldn't resist the opportunity exploit the controversy that naturally arises from suggesting it.

[Tom Goodwin]

Originally Posted by PhilipSEO

Rand Fishkin rants about the success of spam in the current search results:
SEOmoz | I'm Getting More Worried about the Effectiveness of Webspam

A+ to Rand for providing us good lists of sites to reverse engineer their backlinks. I'll be busy all week.

P.S. Is this really new to anyone? Has 100 percent natural linkbuilding ever worked unless you had lots of cash, a large team, or lots of time?

Tom

[Tom Goodwin]

No doubt his blog has been around for at least 3 years, if not much longer. Correct?

Originally Posted by vikramd

My friend blogs about technology (specifically virtualization for a particular unix platform). His content is top notch and he ranks all over the place for just about every imaginable keyword.

He's in a niche, he's got great content and gets decent content. He has no idea what SEO is, no interest in learning.

How did he get to the top?

1. Participating in technical forums.
2. Submitting his site to directories.
3. Blog posting (relevant stuff) to other people's blogs.

He has no adsense and has no interest in putting up ads on his site. It's just personal promotion (it gets him consulting gigs, writing gigs etc..).

So yeah - the "white hat" approach works fine.

"white hat" IMO is also a subjective term because Google has never been consistent about stuff in this area.

If you consider white hat to be blog commenting, guest blogging, article marketing, content syndication - then yeah. Those techniques work fine too.

Honestly - the most effective way to do this is to buy links discretely. Just email the people (skip the link exchanges) and ask for a link or text ad that contains a do-follow link.

If you're paranoid - find people in your niche that are clueless about marketing & SEO.

There's no way Google can figure out you did this (since you're avoiding the link exchanges etc.).

[inter123]

This is great news. As a fantastic writer as I am, I know there is no chance of anybody publishing my work.

This basically says carry on as you are. 95% of people who are serious about business, especially the big businesses, create their own backlinks. There is a low percentage of links that are natural.

Originally Posted by vikramd

How did he get to the top?

1. Participating in technical forums.
2. Submitting his site to directories.
3. Blog posting (relevant stuff) to other people's blogs.

Its not like your 'friend' is just pumping out content for the site and doing absolutely nothing to advertise as google suggest. He is out there promoting and doing public relation work to get his sites noticed. This stuff I would say, from my understaning, google would consider gray hat. And this is what a lot of folk from here do.

[Rocketguy]

Yes, it still works great. Just ask my long list of offline clients that are having great results.

[TimD]

I have three problems with the white hat/black hat distinction.

First, pure white hat means writing great content and hoping people will link to it. What if your visitors don't want content? I do a lot of offline consulting. A lot of my client's customers don't want content - they want beautiful flowers, or a good project manager, or some attorney who will get them out of jail. They'll go to wiki if they want content. What they want is to find someone good to hire. Yet according to Google, if I want to be white hat, I must still generate a bunch of content for these guys and charge them for it.

Second, it takes a long time for pure white hat to work. In fact, Grey Wolf (in the article above) says it never will. And he has data to back it up. So I'm promoting an attorney website by an attorney who used to be at a big firm. He's really good. His site is getting clobbered by attorneys who are nowhere near as good. Why shouldn't he be able to promote himself actively? He's good. He could benefit people who need him. Do I go back to him and say, "Sorry, bad decision to leave the firm with the established website and form a new firm with a new website. Now you have to wait three years until your website naturally attracts traffic"? That will never happen. Other attorneys in my town are very aggressive marketers. He'll never rank if he doesn't build links.

Third, most of the people who claim they do white hat are violating Google's Editorial Guidelines. Go to www.seowhitehats.com and see what they offer. Nearly all of it is manipulated linking (articles, forums, commenting, exchanges). All black hat according to Google.

This is getting ridiculous, I agree. If you look at 90% of the white hat linking sold on this forum, Google would consider it black hat, strictly speaking. So, it's gray hat. It violates Google's Editorial Guidelines but it's reasonable, customary, and not excessive.

So, what's the line between gray hat and black hat? When does it stop being article marketing and start being article spamming? When does it stop being blog commenting and start being blog spamming? Look at Lexorsoft, very popular on this forum. It's almost all black hat by Google standards.

And if you don't participate, you'll never get your website on page one.

Here's a good article on the topic:
There's no such thing as advanced white hat seo
There’s no Such Thing as Advanced White Hat SEO | SEO BlackHat: Black Hat SEO Blog

The conclusion is that white hat seo boils down to this:
1) Site Architecture – Can be learned in 4 hours or less.
2) Analytics – Can you install a javascript and log in?
3) PPC – Even though we used to call that SEM . . .
4) Content – which is better handled by copywriters.

In other words, if you're doing white hat seo, all money you pay to get traffic to your website should go to copywriters and Google. Pretty good racket for Google.

[deloriagod]

Originally Posted by marieluy143

Disagree, for stable performance of the website,, you should engaged with WHITE HAT SEO...

I agree with this. You can go with black hat methods for quick, but short lasting results. Or your can go with white hat for longer lasting but more time consuming results. I suppose you could even combine the two. A little black hat (not enough to get you banned from Google though) to get some quick results then work on your white hat to hold that position properly.

[bgmacaw]

Originally Posted by Tom Goodwin

A+ to Rand for providing us good lists of sites to reverse engineer their backlinks. I'll be busy all week.

And I'm off to build sites in these niches...

SEO Software
Starcraft 2 Strategies
Birthday Party Supplies
Currency Trading Online
Tennis Racquet Reviews
Leather Crafting Supplies
Nanny Services
Home Business Ideas
French Doors
Vietnam Tours
Antioxidant Supplements
Home Espresso Machine Ratings



Oh, wait.

Originally Posted by Tom Goodwin

P.S. Is this really new to anyone? Has 100 percent natural linkbuilding ever worked unless you had lots of cash, a large team, or lots of time?

See, here's how it works.

If you are simply one person working at home building links then you're an evil 'black hat link spammer'. However, if you're a mid to large sized corporation or a venture capital startup with a few million bucks from a firm down the street from Google, then you're simply promoting your site.

Additionally...

from the SEOMoz article...

Matt himself is finally taking a well deserved break, but even at home he's much less public on the web, much less active on webspam topics on his blog, visits fewer conferences and now invests in startups, too

So, you think those startups have a leg up SEO-wise? Hmm....

[TristanPerry]

Originally Posted by bgmacaw

See, here's how it works.

If you are simply one person working at home building links then you're an evil 'black hat link spammer'. However, if you're a mid to large sized corporation or a venture capital startup with a few million bucks from a firm down the street from Google, then you're simply promoting your site.

That sums it up. Also, smaller AdSense publishers have to be fairly white, whilst there are plently of 'premium' publishers who happily use black hat keyword stuffing, have crappy (or zero) content, and more.

It seems like Google's official policy is:

"You, the Small People. Here are our rules, LIVE WITH THEM."

"You, the Big People. Do what you want. Cheers."



Maybe I'm being a little cynical, but it definitely feels like Google are blind/scared when it comes to taking on the 'bigger' guys.

In answer to the question - nope, I don't think 100% whiter-than-white pure SEO works anymore.

"Build great content and they will come" definitely isn't true anymore.

At least, it's not true unless you complete the sentence:

"... only after a minimum of 6-12 months."

And even then there's no guarantee that you'll get great traffic from Google, as the first link discusses.

I think that slightly grayhat SEO such as mass article submission (personally I think that's whitehat, but in Google's eyes it's not, I guess), useful blog commenting - etc - is pretty much necessary nowadays.

I guess it depends on your definitions of white, gray and black hat SEO. To me, I see it as:

Pure whitehat: "Build it and they will come". Been shown not to be true/effective.

Whitehat/slightly grayhat: Using tools to build 'forced' links via article submission, blog commenting, etc etc. I don't think this is spammy (assuming you don't just leave spammy comments such as "Thanks, [Site Link]" on blogs, etc). I think this is now necessary.

Black hat: Using spammy methods and tools to build backlinks. Is very effective, but not something (as an AdSense publisher) that I'll pursue.

I think that whitehat/slightly grayhat is the 'safe' way to go, personally. It's more effective than "Build it and they will come", and can be done usefully (i.e. and not spammy).

[thebitbotdotcom]

Great articles. Thanks for sharing them. After reading them, I get the feeling that the war between relevancy and spam will be ongoing.

Black hat techniques will always work to a degree but their effectiveness will ultimately always be reduced. Occasionally they rise and get everybody excited only to be snuffed out relatively soon thereafter. SEO is a long term, ongoing pursuit.

Personally, I am sticking with white hat techniques and don't worry about it. I try to produce relevant content and let the chips fall where they may.

That being said, you can use white hat techniques in a slightly darkened way...

[wentworth]

I'm also focusing in white hat techniques and base on my observation it still works as long as it is optimize regularly...

Anyway since this is the topic...

I'm confused if link farm is dangerous? They said its a black hat technique

What if I have 800 sites that allow me to post my articles together with my targeted links?

Please share your opinion

[Jacob Martus]

Originally Posted by TristanPerry

Black hat: Using spammy methods and tools to build backlinks. Is very effective, but not something (as an AdSense publisher) that I'll pursue.

90% of tools that you will use will look exactly the same as doing things manually. It will just get the job done many times faster.

For example, the profile backlinks you get from one of the many automated bots look exactly the same as a profile backlink that I might build manually.

If you're afraid to use automated tool because you're an Adsense publisher then maybe you might want to think that through. With use of automated tools, you can devote much more time to what matters...the content.

If it wasn't for several tools to both build my backlinks and index them, I would have much less time to spend on writing really good content. To me, that's the ultimate focus as an Adsense publisher.

Produce as much high quality keyword optimized content as I can. Don't rely 100% on automated backlinking tools, definitely mix it up...but with their help you can build bigger, better, websites that rank well for each page.

I use the following kind of backlinks:
Blog Network
Profiles
Articles (just to buzzle, ezinearticles, articleslash, insnare)
A Few Blog Comments
Guest Posting (get active on twitter and they find you. I've gotten 3 guest posts from high PR, relevant, industry blogs in the past 3 months. These are probably my most stable/powerful/reliable backlinks for both traffic and linkjuice.)

That's about it. However, I'd say 75% of my links come from the first two options (profiles, blog network). I submit articles occasionally but only in hopes of having them syndicated. I could care less about a backlink from Ezine.

Overall, as an Adsense publisher you have nothing more to worry about when using automated tools to build your backlinks as any other affiliate of any company.

You don't have to worry about the Adsense team de-indexing you. You have to worry about the 30 second quality reviewers. And odds are they aren't going to look at your backlinks, they are going to give your site a glance and if it doesn't meet their criteria, kiss it goodbye.

There is no way you will ever get in trouble for having some spammy backlinks. If so, there'd be a bunch of anti-SEO going on where the best way to rank would be to get on the first page and then send a bunch of spammy links to your competitors until they all disappeared. We all know that isn't the case, so don't worry about building automated backlinks.

You are just 1 small fish in a huge ocean of websites. Go out and get your money!

[TristanPerry]

Jacob,
Many thanks for the brilliant post, it's appreciated

Yep I do agree that using automated tools doesn't automatically lead to trouble. I guess I was trying to make the point that people using tools to (for example) send out dozens of links per profile or blog post (i.e. people who genuinely spam and not just leave 1-3 links per profile/blog post, which I agree is fine overall) is something I'd consider black hat.

I definitely agree that automated tools and methods are fine overall though, thanks for the thought-provoking post.

[rypher21]

white hat, takes time yet its worth doing..it gives good results and long term benefits..

[Nail Yener]

What do you define as whitehat SEO? Can SEO be whitehat?

I am not on Google's side here, but if, for a second, you think like them, you will realize that SEO is nothing but creating original content that people will give backlinks to it naturally in time. Other than that, creating your own backlinks in no matter what way, cannot be something whitehat.

This is the most obvious truth that non of us, internet marketers, want to accept. Think of the %90 of the web sites that rank on the first page for all the keywords you can imagine, are they building backlinks to their sites just like us or they are on the first page because people like their content and share with others?

Well, although what I just said above makes sense to me, this will not stop me building my own backlinks until I find a way to create great content that people share and give backlinks to...

[dburk]

Originally Posted by ademmeda

What do you define as whitehat SEO? Can SEO be whitehat?

I am not on Google's side here, but if, for a second, you think like them, you will realize that SEO is nothing but creating original content that people will give backlinks to it naturally in time. Other than that, creating your own backlinks in no matter what way, cannot be something whitehat.

Hi ademmeda,

I strongly disagree with your assertion. I don't know where people get such misguided information from. Who told you this, and why did you buy into it? It's just not true.

Google has always recommended that you create at least some backlinks if you want to get your pages indexed. They have even based their financial viability on a business model that relies on your desire to promote your website (AdWords).

There is nothing inherently non-whitehat about promoting your website. What makes website promotion whitehat, or not, has to do with whether you are violating webmaster guidelines, being deceitful or trying to manipulate rankings by violating the policies of search engines or the websites where you are placing your promotional material.

There seems to be a growing propensity to categorize all website promotion as evil, and that is patently false. I have never heard of Google or any other search engine suggest that you shouldn't promote your website. Google simply doesn't want you manipulating Pagerank in an attempt to gain SERP rankings you have not earned. They have no problem with your earning ranking legitimately, including promoting your website honestly and ethically as well as earning meritorious links.

I suggest you start paying attention to what search engines actually say, not what some boob wrote in a hysterical rant for a hyped up linkbait article.

[BillyPilgrim]

Yes please. Don't use automation and do everything exactly the way Big Bro...I mean Google says.
Meanwhile my kids need to be fed. I'll wear whatever hat that takes. With a clear conscience, knowing I won.

[unclepennybags]

I always use white hat tactics because I want my sites to be making money as long as possible. A lot of backlink tools are whitehat.

I guess it depends on what links you are going for. Manually going out to other sites and building links takes a lot of time but is fine for your first few money sites.

Whitehat is so effective for my biz and I sleep good at night knowing that.

[jhonsean]

Its still working but it will takes time to mature and get the results, always do the right thing create quality content that will link to the other sites that are relevant to your site do this by blog posting great article that are informative and usable to others, blog commenting, directory submission, article submission, and forums.

[Jacob Martus]

Originally Posted by runescape1

dUH, It still works that what most peole do.

OMG. Thanks for this very detailed insight. Do you have anymore words of wisdom???

[Mike Anthony]

As a big advocate of white hat I ummmm still shall we say responsible prime the pump a bit with a spanking brand new site

I also think the days are done when you can rank for any competitive term with just great content and I mean written content. the average blogger, webmaster writer isn't searching for articles to link to. They are looking for things to write about though. The reason why white hat can work and very effectively is because people still link to resources, applications, new apps etc, cool websites. social networks etc.

Press releases for example work gangbuster for some and not for others because no one wants to pick up your latest ebook release as news but they will link to a web 2.0 website. If you expect to do white hat you better have some things that are newsworthy, cool or useful in the sense that people can use it online. Your sales page or adsense site is none of the above.

[Mike Anthony]

"My friend blogs about technology (specifically virtualization for a particular unix platform). His content is top notch and he ranks all over the place for just about every imaginable keyword."

I can see that. I am going to bet he breaks news or does tutorials. In that niche you don't have to be the primary source of news you just have to be the first place alot of people read about it.

[Mike Anthony]

Originally Posted by Tom Goodwin

A+ to Rand for providing us good lists of sites to reverse engineer their backlinks.

Downright charitable

[Jacob Martus]

Originally Posted by Mike Anthony

As a big advocate of white hat I ummmm still shall we say responsible prime the pump a bit with a spanking brand new site

I also think the days are done when you can rank for any competitive term with just great content and I mean written content. the average blogger, webmaster writer isn't searching for articles to link to. They are looking for things to write about though. The reason why white hat can work and very effectively is because people still link to resources, applications, new apps etc, cool websites. social networks etc.

Press releases for example work gangbuster for some and not for others because no one wants to pick up your latest ebook release as news but they will link to a web 2.0 website. If you expect to do white hat you better have some things that are newsworthy, cool or useful in the sense that people can use it online. Your sales page or adsense site is none of the above.

So how would one go about promoting an adsense site completely white-hat? I often wonder. I choose not to take that route, but I know there are still people that preach it.

Natural links are a thing of the past in many cases and for many people. With the introduction of nofollow, many bloggers and webmasters choose not to link out to anything but the likes of major newsworthy sites or huge resources like wikipedia. (There are exceptions to this rule, I read several well known SEO bloggers who do regularly link to the 'average joe', but by and large, natural backlinks just don't happen enough or in enough quantity for anyone to rely on)

[paulgl]

There is no black or white hat. SEO is SEO if it works, does good things, etc., etc.

If something is "b lack hat," it's not really SEO, is it?

That's been my beef with terms like that.

What do you call stuff that does neither good not bad? SEO? Course not.
So, what do you call stuff that get's you in trouble? Certainly NOT SEO!

There's stuff that works, stuff that doesn't.
Stuff that's good, stuff that's bad.
Stuff that just does not matter one way or the other.

I myself do much stuff that works and STFU.
Bgmacaw and Jacob learned me that.

Paul

[cagliostro]

I find all that white - black hat seo non-sense. After all what Google Adsense is ? Make people to CLICK using all kind of ways (blends, etc etc). Cheating them.

Don't get me wrong. I use adsense my self.

[oneit]

Doing white hat seo will decrease the chance of getting ban through search engines..

[richlaff]

When it comes to white hat SEO, it takes time to get result, but if you are looking for permanent solutions to get good result then white hat SEO is thing, where you can start and finish.

[searchnology]

I've managed SEO for about 3 fortune 500 companies in the past and I have my own niche sites so I have seen both sides of the coin.

I won't go into the bifurcation of white vs black tactics but I would say that the deciding factor on which to use (or what percentage to allocate if using both) largely depends on the demand in the niche and your competition. Try going purely white hat with insurance or mortgages and you will be in the soup line waiting for results.

On the other hand, if you are targeting a small niche with few competitors and provide good content/products you can absolutely use just white hat tactics. Some will say just use blac k hat there too and that is probably reasonable for short term results.

Of course, niches that are both small and profitable are few and far between these days thanks to the information age. If there is ever a market for "Purple Oompa Loompa Costumes" I could easily corner this market with pure white hat tactics.

...my 2 cents.