Is All SEO Black Hat? - What Do you Think?

I'm inclined to agree in some respects.

Onpage optimisation I guess is considered more white hat (if done properly of course) as, it is your site and you can do as you like.

A lot of what Google looks for when it comes to onpage factors, also makes it a better experience for the user, so you find they go more hand in hand.

Link building however, you're right - I think it's still gaming the system, even if you do it properly.

You're spreading your own links for two reasons, to get traffic, and help in your rankings.

I guess the only methods (and there will be more), that could be considered white hat would be submitting to directories with the intention of the users of the directories being able to find you (not solely to help rankings), articles etc - all with the intention of allowing people to find you via other sites.

I always like to conduct my SEO in an ethical manner - I hate spammy methods - although unfortunately some of them still work!

Thanks for posing this question

I am saying that ALL SEO could be considered black hat, which is why i tend to think that the terms really don't matter.

Lets just call SEO . . SEO . . and be done with it.

How can ethically optimising your site to be seen more favourably by search engines be considered Black Hat?

Let's say I owned a hardware store on a busy high street...

If I change the window display around, maybe add larger banners, throw in some stronger lighting - just to attract more customers - is that Black Hat?

Maybe I change the name of my store to make it more obvious to people what I'm selling. "Tom's Store" becomes "Buy Quality Hardware at Tom's".

Then I speak to related businesses to get them to pass my shop details on to their customers, and I'll do the same for them. Link building so to speak.

All this is to optimise and grow my business and is completely ethical (or White Hat if you will).

It's only when you start spamming social networks, blogs and other sites that I believe crosses into a grey area.

I firmly believe that if you build a solid site, providing valuable content and tools, then start building your links the old fashioned way (such as actually contacting webmasters for link exchange) then you will see good results. Sure, not a quick as blasting your site through something like SEOnuke, but if you want to be in it for the long term, why not treat this like a proper business?

So - short answer to your question: No - I don't consider ALL SEO to be Black Hat, but some of it can and does cross the line.

so im expecting you can define both.. Because you're results are good. So which method do you use?

Oh Come On!

• Writing good, keyword rich and relevant copy on your website is not blackhat.
• Optimising your website to ensure that the internal and external linking is efficient is not blackhat.
• Makeing sure your page titles, permalinks, meta-tags, and other HTML features are SEO friendly is not blackhat.
• Making good, relevant comments on other relevant blogs and forums linking back to your site is not blackhat.
• Writing good content that other people are happy to link to is not blackhat.

All those things are exactly what Google is looking for, and they are all a part of good SEO practices.

Then there are the practices that come in varying shades of grey. Writing and submitting articles to the article directories is manipulating search engine results. Most would not consider this blackhat though. That might be a touch gray but it seems Google isn't especially fussed if the directory has good editorial processes in place.

Social bookmarketing gets a little grayer, but where SEO does get black is when webmasters put hidden cloaked links, hack sites to get links (has just happened to me) or use illegal (as against state law, not necessarily breaking Googles rules; that's not illegal) and downright fraudulent methods to get links.

However, there's nothing stopping you from commenting because you have something to say and leaving a link back to your page at the same time. After all why bother leaving a link if you're not interested in the SEO or traffic benefits?

There's writing content, and then there's writing content to encourage others to link. The latter helps with SEO. And there's no reason why you can't write high quality linkbait.

Besides, there are also differences in the style you use to write a post. A wall of text is harder to read and less likely to be linked than a well structured list post. Using heading tags in the text also helps with SEO.

So yes, refining your writing techniques to encourage linking could very well be considered SEO.

Edit: Forgot this...

Absolutely. I think it's a bit of a shame that a website won't necessarily stand on its own merits. A certain amount of self-promotion is necessary, and really the only way to do that is to do at least some manipulation of the search engines. How much and how far is up to the individual, but getting back to the OP, it's simply wrong to say that all SEO is blackhat.

That's not true at all. Best in breed sites get #1 ranks by being great, without any off-site SEO at all. Good sites don't have to "build links", because their customers/users/whatever create the links for them.

Yeah, I guess it's time for color reconciliation. SEO may be pitch-black, gray or off-white - yet never completely white. That may make us sad at times, but there's no way we can avoid the ever-continuing hunting for the shade closest to snow white

It can't be all blackhat otherwise it wouldn't exist.

Google created the algorythms for a reason.. so that people have to work for their positions and to make websites prove they are worthy of those top positions.. afterall who's going to manipulate a website with no worthy content.. if they did, it's pretty darn stupid.