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SlightlyShadySEO
:-) I don't think I've ever tried to conceal the nature of blackhat sites.
I believe they CAN provide a good user experience and whatnot, but that doesn't change their reality.
@JohnHGhode: It's not always these metrics. I tend to be more towards the grayhat side of things, so this is the list that I personally use. For each unique SEO, the list will change. For instance I do not do any article marketing. Someone heavily involved in that would have a very different list. Think of it as a starting point ;-)
Story: 3 New Uses for Archive.org
I personally have gone back and forth in terms of clients.
It provides a reliability I would like to have. but at the same time, I find it hard to get as passionate about other people's sites as I do my own. Beyond that, having my income directly tied to my ability to rank makes me calculate everything very carefully, and adds a sense of urgency that normally leads to a superior quality of promotion.
Negative SEO is not only possible, but getting more and more possible each day. The more restrictive google gets about linkbuilding activities, the more issues this is going to create.
Some day it may be easier to de-rank competitors(who aren't extraordinarily well established) then it will be to outrank them. And that is going to be a nasty day.
@hugoguzman: You would be amazed. I was talking to a friend of mine who is not even the "darkest of the dark" in terms of SEO. We're both constantly getting requests for things like this. And not from the uninformed either. More inhouse teams, and domain owners who already run heavy SEO on their domain.
Neither of us are taking these requests, but I'm finding typically the offered amount for this "service" is between $5,000-$7,000 for what would amount to a quick job. The demand is there, and people(though not me) are going to fill it soon.
While I think it's great Google is even pretending to answer these questions, I think it's safe to say their answers would have set off their own "duplicate content" filters.
Everyone, it's a tactic. Use it or don't. At least be glad you now know about it rather than it being abused in private.
Every. Single. Social. App. Is Gamed. All of them.
@Harith: People "buying links" are/were not blackhat seos. Actually, that update did not affect any blackhat I know.
"Bitching and moaning" we were not. Crap, all the commercial white/gray?hats buying links at the time were knocked out of the rankings, leaving even more room to grow and expand.
Obviously, it would be practices that are against Google's guidelines. But I would say that it also has to focus on automation.
Paying for links is something you'll rarely catch a BH doing. "If I can get em for free, why pay?"
Looking forward to it Mike. Which forum though? You're going to get very different answers depending on which one. (Some emphasize social/more direct sn spam, some are more based in SEO and search engines)
@Harith: IIRC this was the case that estabilished there was risk to this technique. Remember the uproar? So how exactly is one to warn of Google's decisions before they make them?
Thanks for the kind words Jill :-)
And thanks to search engine people for letting me post over there.
@Brian: The end user is not represented in this because there's dozens and dozens of possible tactics, all of which affect the end user experience differently. For example I have some sites that actually have good content, and promoted blackhat. Do those damage the "user experience"?
Or for cloaking sites for example. It is in my best interest to send them where they want to go. That is how I make sales. I'm not going to promote "Princess Jasmine" pages and send them to a page about pillows. That's a waste of my effort for inbound links, and will result in no sales.
Actually, my cloaking sites analyze the user's request and redirect them to different pages based on their search.
So for a weightloss site, something involving the words "rapid, fast, quick, soon" may go to a diet product specializing in fast weight loss. "organic, natural, holistic" may go to an herbal product.
But beyond that, and most importantly: Our job as SEOs, no matter how we sugar coat it, is to rank sites. Sites that may, or may not deserve their rankings. The entire process of linkbuilding is a manipulation. Your argument seems to be more of an argument against SEO in general than blackhat. We're both trying to send the user where they want to go, just using different tactics to achieve this.
However, as always, your comment is appreciated. Even if I disagree ;-)
1)My intent is obviously to appear to Google, I won't argue that. But the company is going to profit off of what I do on my server regardless of what I do. I see little issue with trying to make as much as possible off of it if they're doing the same. It might be a "sinking to their level" thing, but I'm alright with that.
Let me create a variation on Marion Jones then. If she knew she was going to be forced to race whether she volunteered or not, and that others were going to profit off of her the same amount no matter what she did, would she not be justified in doing whatever possible to try and grab a chunk of that for herself? If she's going to be exploited for anothers benefit, why try and profit herself? And does she owe anything to the people who would've forced her to race either way?
If I was her, I would do whatever was necessary to win the race(rank high) so that I could get something out of the ordeal, but that doesn't mean I'd feel loyalty to those who would've profit off me either way
2)Google can set the rules in their own house. And they're free to ban me from the race, and they will never hear a bit of resentment from me(except in a joking context perhaps). I'm not arguing that blackhat should be allowed by Google. Merely thet they perhaps brought it on themselves with constantly changing rules, and that their not allowing blackhat has no impact on personal morality.
Let me ask a question. Given NYT, and Youtube's ability to cloak, and the blatant doorway pages had by sites with large advertising budgets, is it really cheating? For example, what if the people in charge of the olympics allowed the 2 top runners to use shoes that were banned for everyone else. Would it the be unethical to level the playing field?
@Kimota: When you sign up for the olympics or any race, you agree to compete by a given set of rules. I never agreed to Google's rules, and never asked them to index my site. If you were descended upon in the night by the olympic committee, and taken to the race by force, would you worry about the rules as much?
No. An important part of allegiance to the rules is signing up to compete in the first place.
Sphunn for good points, though I stand by sculpting. My only issue:
maybe they want the contact page findable in Google
Just because it's nofollowed doesn't mean it's not going to get indexed. That's why blog spam still exists to the level it does. It gets you indexed. And how many other sites out there are going to even have that in the title? The company name in the domain? Opening up one or two powerful-ish links(I know, I know, straying from the template sucks) should be more than enough to rank it.
This would completely utterly and totally destroy Google's business model. They'd never do it. You wouldn't be able to access their ads. Or for that matter, more than the 60 sites to search.
On a side note, does anyone know where they got whatever they're smoking?
Other incredible linkbait appearance by (especially the girl) include her offering to give blowjobs to get elected to public office, and offering to have sex with virgins who support net neutrality.
No, I'm not kidding.
Excellent article. I'll admit to being guilty of a few of these.
Glad to hear you like it :-) I always get worried when something doesnt get sphinns too quick.
Here's all I have to say in the matter.
http://i25.tinypic.com/33tpg5t.jpg
Errm. I posted this over there, but I thought I'd post it over here too. Maybe it can add something to the conversation.
Ok. So I'm about as not Matt Cutts[who this question was inteded for] as you can get. But I thought about this article a bit, and thought I'd chime in with what I'd do if I had a whitehat firmly grafted to my forehead.
First of all, embrace porn 2.0. Redtube, youporn, pornotube, megarotic, these sites get incredible traffic. Watermark videos and upload them. Beyond that, many give a backlink for it. Also many sites embed these videos, and will give a backlink that way. And even if they don't, they'll drive link juice back to your page ON those porn2.0 sites, and from there into your site.
After that, expand out into sites like freeones.com and porneskimo.com that list and link to free movie/picture previews. All these should obviously be hosted on your primary domain, and passing juice back to the main domain.
Then go after the sites like rabbitsreviews.com that are respected and offer reviews of the various pay porn sites out there. The worst most will ask for is a reciprocal link which shouldn't be a problem considering it's not an excessive amount.
Alright. So after that, it's all about the blogging. I would launch 2 separate blogs. 1 that posts previews of videos and whatnot, and can be used to submit trackbacks to other porn blogs that have posted videos of the same pornstar that's in the video you're posting about. People DO actually subscribe to these blogs as well.
The second blog would be one used primarily for link bait. It may be a good idea to have this one on a separate domain without the same kind of pornographic content as the real one to make it more digg/reddit/whatever friendly.
In addition, there's many pligg(digg clone) installations out there for adult videos. ("powered by pligg" porn movie returns almost 23,000 results on Google)
At that point, launch an affiliate program. Host galleries for the affiliates on the base domain you're using, and once again pass link juice back to the home page. To get around duplicate content issues, have it drop a cookie upon entering the affiliate gallery, then do a 302 redirect to the same page, but without the affiliate ID present. Have a different description of the video for each gallery. Right there, you'll have a bunch of affiliates linking into your site, and all the juice passing properly with no duplicate content issues. Oh yeah, and host the videos themselves on a separate server to make sure you don't slow down your main one.
There. The whitehat porno empire. Erm. I think it's whitehat.
EDIT: The affiliate program might get sketchy, since you'd technically be responsible for the actions of your affiliates when promoting THEIR pages I suppose.
Story: Gambert Sock Puppet Busted
This is completely pathetic. Although I REALLY want to hear an update when that law suit is filed.
....no, they never wiill. It's pointless, has no bearing on relevancy, and it's hard enough to get people to spell properly, nevermind capitalization.
Story: Hiding the Inner Shadiness of your Blackhat Sites