Would you consider this black hat / unethical?

[PLaboon]

Situation:

My company is trying to build links into the official city of Pittsburgh's website to get it to rank #1 for the Google search "The Best City in the World". I thought this was a fun and creative idea to use to show some love for the city I grew up and operate my business in. however, a few other SEO companies claim since I am building links to the city this could be considered a black hat tactic. My response was "How else can you effect rankings with no access to a site - pray?". Of course none of them respond to any of my questions but it seems funny that SEO companies are saying any type of link building is black hat regardless of how it's obtained.

Note: We are not using any SPAM methods but are reaching out to the community (blogs, forums, etc..) to get them to write why they think Pittsburgh's the best city and link to the official site using the anchor text "The Best City in The World".

Here is the press release we sent out:

Web Marketing Firm to Raise Pittsburgh's International Online Image

I am very interested to see what you all think about this!

[melanied]

There are some SEO Purists who believe that any attempt to manipulate the search engine listings is blackhat. That the only pure white hat form of SEO is to provide great content. If it's worthy, people will link to it.

Most realistic SEOs recognize natural, organic (yet controlled) linkbuilding as a whitehat tactic.

[Aronya]

The fact that they don't respond to your questions should be answer enough.

[danhughes]

Pittsburgh, best city in the world? That's an uphill struggle if ever I heard one

Frankly, I laugh in the face of anyone who thinks that linkbuiding is blackhat. Not even Google thinks that, especially the way you are doing it. In fact, based on the methods you're using, you aren't linkbuilding as much as raising awareness.

On page SEO is almost worthless without off page (unless you want to rank for something extremely obscure).

I suppose you may kinda, sorta be edging in the area of Google-bombing, especially if the page / site makes no reference itself to the claim. That said, the pro google-bomb argument has always been that enough people link to a site using a keyword, then Google is quite right to rank that site for that word.

You could really have some fun at your competitors expense and encourage people to file complaints with the BBB or PA Att Gen. After all, if an SEO company is claiming to improve ranking and not linkbuilding, that has to be bordering on fraud

[melanied]

Since you have no access to optimize any pages on that site for that phrase, though, you'd have better luck registering your own site, building it out with content about pittsburgh, and getting THAT to rank. Then you could even have a keyword domain name like pittsburgh-best-city.com or something.

Additionally, then when traffic was coming in, you'd be able to sell adspace to local businesses.

[Kevin_Hutto]

not black hat. cookie stuffing is black hat. this is not even on the radar of black hat.

[PLaboon]

Thanks for the thoughts. I swear their has to be an algorthym that shows SEO companies that don't link build and how little traffic they generate.

We got a write up in our local paper and we already got haters screaming "google bomb". This is hollarious because by looking at their site they have NO SEO other then writing blog posts lol.

Thanks again

[dave830]

As a native Pittsburgher, I think any effort to show the world the amazing awesomeness of this city is a good idea.

Go Penguins!!

[malcasid]

Ummm, I think its totally ethical as long as you aren't spamming. Link building is a totally legitimate seo technique. I don't know any seo purists so this comes off as a surprise to me.