Please don’t talk about Blackhat Mr Blogger
I love the fact that every single blogger and so-called expert Internet Marketing CEO seems to be a GURU in the arts of blackhat. Oh boy… why you don’t simply shut-up and open your mouth when you know what you are talking about?
Seriously. And Pardon me if my tone sounds rude… but I just read a post in Smart Company talks about the JCPenney case.
If you are not aware JCPenny main website was penalized by Google for “trying to alter the algorithm” by purchasing links.
Obviously after Google penalized JCPenny Smartcompany.com.au posted an article about
“SMEs warned to grill SEO managers after Google penalises JCPenney for using black hat techniques”
Man… I started reading the article waiting to DISCOVER an amazing strategy that the evil webmaster of JCPenny decided to do to “trick” the algorithm… but what I found was well… mmm… they purchased some links. That’s all.
So is this black hat?
Well… I’m not going to enter in that discussion, because in this industry you can find the World Wide Association of SEO professionals, therefor there is not one single 
definition about what Blachat is… but if getting links in an artificial way is blackhat… you, me, my mom, and for sure my children will become blackhat experts in the future.
Stop with the paranoia.
It seems the blackhat paranoia reminds me with the “Flue virus” , the 2K meltdowm or the end of the world after 9-11….
It all seems.. dark… criminal… dangerous … just like the article of SmartCompany
Last year, SmartCompany investigated the black hat scene in Australia and found that local businesses are engaging in such tactics.
Really? What tactics?
Because if you are going to point the finger and talk about blackhat, you need to really understand what the heck you are talking about.
So here we go mr SmartCompany, let me give you a quick lesson about what blackhat SEO it’s really all about.
The Black hat artist is not a guy that goes out there and buy links… because… mmm buying links is an long term strategy and doesn’t mean automatic traffic….
SPEED it’s what blackhat it’s all about… speed and the capacity to replicate what works… what get’s you paid.
When you play the blackhat game… you create sites that are born fast and die faster
(if you are good you keep them for a while…)
But generally you build sites that die… sites that their only purpose it’s one: TO MAKE YOU MONEY.
yep… you build sites that die days after you build them but you don’t care… why not?
Because you build tons…
thousands…
you build so many that your game is ruled by maths.
If I build 1000 sites and 20% of them work… and each of them managed to pull me $10 per day and the sites last 7-9 days… well… $90 per site x 200 … you make the numbers… not a bad business after all.
The important point to understand it’s that SEO companies in Australia don’t do blackhat SEO tactics… they just do lame-stupid tactics… but that doesn’t make them BLACK HAT Experts !!!!
The Black hat expert is someone that can setup a complex system where they harvest emails, request link exchange and once a whole network of links are being sent to their target site, redirect all that links via 301 to their target site… and all this in automatic. Email scrapping, delivery, link setup, 301, cloaking links.
So in a few words: They know what they are doing.
They are not just trying to make $10 per week… they are usually very skillful programmers that understand the way the Algorithm works and they are smart enough to build server based applications to redirect google juice, traffic and cloak their real intentions.
This type of “black hatter” may also use hacking tecniques to find exploits in WP sites or any open source Content Management System and insert links or even redirect traffic to a precise url .. they do it fast, hard and you will noticed once your site . They are not playing. They are not “SEO companies”.
And the reason why they are not SEO companies is….
It’s not profitable.
Blackhat it’s used in sites you don’t want people to find… so clearly you don’t use PROPER site like JCPenny.
So why JCPenny came down?
Simple. Someone found out and reported to Google. I seriously doubt Google really detected they where buying links… instead someone realized what they where doing and reported it to the big G.
But what drives me crazy it’s…
when someone like Jim Stewart, chief executive of Stewart Media … claims that for JCPenny to rank the option of buying links was to do some onsite-SEO…
Stewart claims
“A lot of businesses don’t need them. I look at the JCPenney site and the problem they have is they are so image heavy there isn’t a lot of room to move there. My advice is that they need more text there to make it more relevant for the Google bots,” he says.
Oh boy… so that’s the way to rank for a keyword liek the one they where trying to rank? It’s the solution more relevant content? I don’t think so … because it has nothing to do with content relevancy here… what matters it’s LINKS.
LINKS
LINKS
LINKS
and JCpenny understood that… and any SEO company understand the same concept … because at the end of the day … thats why we get paid.
We get paid to link build for companies… not to create more relevant content.
Try to go out there and do just onsite SEO and see how far you go. We know that, CEO media experts know that… and the business owner knows that.
So why we don’t stop playing games and stop claiming that JCpenny was doing blackhat?
Come on guys… stop acting like babies… and let’s be honest here.
What JCpenny was doing was what any business with a large budget it’s doing … and if you don’t believe go out there and start doing link analysis, of the top ranking “mortgages”, “forex”, “liposuction” and “loans” sites. Go and see how many paid links they appear in your data …
but off course… CEO of SEO companies… are experts in talking to websites like smart companies, explaining of the DANGERS of dealing with the WRONG SEO company.
DANGER!!! DANGER!!!! BIRD FLUE!!!! 2012 end of the WORLD!!!!!!
Stop crying wolf… stop trying to scare small business owners…. stop trying to tell them that without YOU they are in harms way.
mmm if only we could have an open discussion about the SEO industry without so many lies, BS and double standards….
I have a dream….
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Gabriel Machuret
I'm an SEO professional living in the South Coast of NSW - Australia. SEO is what I do... I'm not a web guy, or a webmaster, or a designer... I just do SEO ;) Love it. Enjoy it and I still have fun doing it.
2 / 16 / 2011 8:36 pm
You should probably change “black haters” since you are not advocating racism
Daniel Duckworth´s last blog ..HOW TO- Track offline print advertising campaigns
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2 / 16 / 2011 10:53 pm
Spot on…I read that article..couldn’t stop laughing after that. Not sure why their so-called “seo experts” portray strategies as black/white/gray hat. I believe all of them have some role or the other depending on the purpose and market.
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2 / 17 / 2011 2:01 pm
I agree, blackhat is for fast and short “success” online. Although buying links is not a good thing if you want to rank in Google I would not directly say it’s “blackhat” all the time.
Take this as an example:
A guy needs sponsors for his new wordpress theme, in return he will give you a footer link on the theme. The theme gets downloaded 9000 times and is active at 1000 different sites. Now is this blackhat? It’s almost the same as buying links if you know people will use the theme.
//Alexander.
Make Money Online´s last blog ..Earn a fiver at Fiverrcom
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2 / 26 / 2011 1:03 pm
I do agree that we all (at least most of us) buy links in this or that way. We can even think that we do everything ‘right’ but in fact when we hire a seo specialist, we pay him for his links. Thus, they can be called paid links. So it’s difficult to call it ‘black hat ‘seo.
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Gabriel Machuret Reply:
March 6th, 2011 at 6:50 pm
I think the concept of Blackhat is one of the most difficult terms to clearly define. It seems that you may be doing something “right’ and if Matt Cutts decides that he doesn’t really like it —> then you become the biggest black hat artist in the planet.
The best thing is to work on whatever you feel it’s “ethical” and right to do. Build for the longterm…
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