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SEO experts: White Hat SEO

by TLondon
16 replies
  • SEO
    • |
This is just out of curiousity sake.

Professional SEO experts, what do you do for your clients in terms of BACKLINK BUILDING that is considered completely white hat SEO?

I don't see that working in any way. As soon as you start MANUALLY building backlinks, it doesn't look like what hat SEO to me. That's not PEOPLE sharing your website's link ORGANICALLY, which is what Google wants. Right?

I might be wrong. Kindly share your input.
#experts #hat #seo #white
  • Profile picture of the author TotalWebsiteControl
    That is what off page seo is all about. Gaming the system
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  • Profile picture of the author PBScott
    I do not call myself an SEO expert, but I am practiced.

    Building backlinks is just creating more spam, total white hat link building would be using content people choose to link to on their own.
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    • Profile picture of the author twilightofidols
      Originally Posted by PBScott View Post

      I do not call myself an SEO expert, but I am practiced.

      Building backlinks is just creating more spam, total white hat link building would be using content people choose to link to on their own.
      This user is a perfect example of why you don't listen to advice on forums.

      "Building backlinks is just creating more spam"

      He has roughly 4,000 backlinks from nearly 400 domains as crawled by Ahrefs to his web site linked to in his signature. Web directory links, forum signatures from profiles with 2 posts, social bookmarks etc..I promise you these links weren't submitted to these directories by people choosing to link to great content. Take everything with a grain of salt.
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  • Profile picture of the author CyberAlien
    Technically any form of link building could be considered grey/blackhat. If you want to go the 100% whitehat route, then publish as much quality content as you can on your website so that more people will find it and link to it.
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    • Profile picture of the author watsonovedades
      Originally Posted by Escalate Internet View Post

      Technically any form of link building could be considered grey/blackhat. If you want to go the 100% whitehat route, then publish as much quality content as you can on your website so that more people will find it and link to it.
      i gree with this 100%
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    • Profile picture of the author DollarGOD
      Originally Posted by Escalate Internet View Post

      If you want to go the 100% whitehat route, then publish as much quality content as you can on your website so that more people will find it and link to it.

      (aka enjoy no commissions/sales and page 385 in SERPs)
      (or just do normal gray hat SEO that most sane people are doing for years with repeatable results)

      Originally Posted by TLondon View Post

      1. Why do the most famous SEO companies shamelessly claim that they do white hat SEO?
      2. And how does Google NOT hate all the SEO companies (and don't do anything about them?), knowing very well that all of them manipulate the system? I think they kind of want that system to be manipulated.
      1. To boost sales. A lot of people live in fairy land and it "sounds" better and same people probably don't have basic concepts of SEO down so they go for it and they read on Matt Cutt's blog that white hat is the only way or Matt will find you and destroy you.
      2. I think is just too big of a market, I mean everybody (not delusional SEOs) are in grey hat, so what's the use of punishing few companies.
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  • Profile picture of the author twilightofidols
    OP you've basically figured it out. Imagine if you're selling a product for a terribly embarrassing health problem.

    Do you think XYZ blog is going to rank to your web site out of the goodness of their heart? Do you think Bob is going to share it on his facebook because this content is "SOOO GREAT". This is delusional. You'd be lucky if they even found it.

    I wish the "hats" designation would really just be thrown out the window. White, grey, black it's all a bunch of BS. What matters is what delivers RESULTS. Results matter.

    Manual, automated, whatever you are doing to go out of your way to build links to increase your search engine ranking you are attempting to manipulate SERPs.

    The general rule a lot of marketers claim to have is, "would I still want this link even if Google didn't exist?" But let's be honest there. There's only one reason we do SEO. The odds of getting a free high traffic from a friendly web site are extremely small because most webmasters who own powerful sites realize the value of every pixel on their site and usually aren't charity workers.

    Do what you know works, test and fail, test and fail. Don't listen to guru mantras, or "common knowledge". Find what's uncommon, because that's what works.
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    • Profile picture of the author Sam Zachuth
      White Hat SEO is all about building links with quality written content, and pointing to quality sites. Personally, we refuse clients who have poorly done websites or are in useless markets. That is how we can keep our claims of only ever doing White Hat SEO.
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  • Profile picture of the author writeaway
    The whole concept of Backlink *BUILDING* is already gray hat. If you want to be TRULY white hat, you have to either DRAW or EARN links or RECLAIM them.
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  • Profile picture of the author TLondon
    Yeah, that's what I figured. And twilightofidols, I'm with you 100% on this.

    So here are my two pre-thought follow-up questions then.

    1. Why do the most famous SEO companies shamelessly claim that they do white hat SEO?
    2. And how does Google NOT hate all the SEO companies (and don't do anything about them?), knowing very well that all of them manipulate the system? I think they kind of want that system to be manipulated.

    Any thoughts?
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    • Profile picture of the author natethegreat7037
      To me it seems Google is more concerned about spammy behavior in general.

      It seems those seo companies that thrive update after update understand that steady, organic, methodical link building is the name of the game. Basically non spammy behavior.

      An interesting subject, regardless. Who knows what the future holds?
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    • Profile picture of the author twilightofidols
      Originally Posted by TLondon View Post


      1. Why do the most famous SEO companies shamelessly claim that they do white hat SEO?
      2. And how does Google NOT hate all the SEO companies (and don't do anything about them?), knowing very well that all of them manipulate the system? I think they kind of want that system to be manipulated.
      1. When it comes to on-page factors, many of the blackest black hats don't do any shady practices these days. Even the blackest black hats do a mix of white hat SEO and every shade of grey in between.

      Many clients of an SEO company won't know the difference between white/black/grey. If they heard anything at all they heard that blackhat = bad, whitehat = good.

      It's pretty genius actually. Tell everyone around you to do the "right" thing do it the "white hat" way, get a thousand people to repeat it over and over again unquestionably, pretend you're doing it the same way, all the while you're doing what actually works behind the scenes. Your competitors are left in the dust with their ethics intact, and you're making the cash.

      Some niches lend themselves better to "white hat" link building, other niches don't. If you have a legitimate site where you review pills for Erectile Dysfunction, your SEO approach is going to be different than if you're a Home Improvement site.

      If you know what you're doing and you're damn good at it, your link building efforts will be virtually undetectable. People say automation is bad. Automation is bad. I have links built through automation that read so well you'd be hard pressed to know the article was ever spun.

      Good spam, doesn't look like spam. It flies under the radar. In fact, it looks "white hat".

      2. There are many SEO factors that don't involve artificial link building and Google is more than happy for these companies to reach their clients. This is evidenced by the fact that many SEO companies advertise with Adwords. They created this industry they are now profiting from.

      If the true tactics many of these companies used were outed, they would very likely suffer the wrath of manual action. No SEO company would be willing to risk their entire business just to advertise that they employ "blackhat" techniques. Goodbye Adwords clicks, goodbye pulling the wool under Google, goodbye reputation. You'll never see any SEO company advertise themselves outright on a blackhat forum, you'll only find "link building services" from rogue individuals.

      The second you change those title tags on your page to be found in the search engine you are manipulating Google. It's just a matter of knowing what sort of manipulation Google allows according to their "rules" and deciding whether or not you want to hack the Matrix.
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  • Profile picture of the author Jeffery Moss
    Anything you do to place links pointing back to your website or blog is likely be seen as blackhat by Google, (depending on their specific TOS). And, even if a particular backlinking strategy is acceptable now, think about a year down the road when Google has changed their rules again.

    Maybe the only really safe backlink is one that is given to you by another site owner freely.

    And, how do you earn these backlinks?

    You can publish high quality content such as a useful list or whitepaper and ask other bloggers to link to it if they find it useful. This is called link bait.

    You could start a controversial conversation on your blog or forum which attracts attention from other site owners who are likely to link back to it.

    These backlinks are whitehat as they are given by the other site owner who receives no compensation.
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  • Profile picture of the author nik0
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    Originally Posted by TLondon View Post

    This is just out of curiousity sake.

    Professional SEO experts, what do you do for your clients in terms of BACKLINK BUILDING that is considered completely white hat SEO?

    I don't see that working in any way. As soon as you start MANUALLY building backlinks, it doesn't look like what hat SEO to me. That's not PEOPLE sharing your website's link ORGANICALLY, which is what Google wants. Right?

    I might be wrong. Kindly share your input.
    Producing great content and outreach to people in your niche can be considered whitehat I suppose.

    Placing links at local directories and nationwide ones like Yelp isn't that bad either.

    Google Places, Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest doesn't look unnatural either and can give you some nice exposure to attract natural links.

    All very time consuming though and no guarantee's.

    That's why I rather stick to grey hat SEO, which is still relatively safe and obvious effective.
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  • Profile picture of the author George8
    In theory if you are building backlinks on purpose then it is not white hat. But there is a difference between blasting your site with spammy links and creating high quality manual backlinks!
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    • Profile picture of the author TLondon
      Originally Posted by George8 View Post

      In theory if you are building backlinks on purpose then it is not white hat. But there is a difference between blasting your site with spammy links and creating high quality manual backlinks!
      None of which are white hat SEO anyway.

      If we follow the perception that 'white hat' must be 100% 'Google-approved', then in my eyes, there's no such thing as white hat SEO. There's just SEO, and Google sees it as grey hat at best. As soon as you start looking for ways to manually rank your website, that's not a natural link building a.k.a. not white hat SEO. That's just SEO.
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