Black Hat/White Hat: Playing Dirty with SEO
Search Engine Strategies San Jose 2008
Wednesday, August 20, 2008
4:15p - 5:30p

Speakers:
Jill Whalen, HighRankings.com
Bruce Clay, BruceClay.com
Dave Naylor, Bronco.co.uk
Todd Friesen, “on sabbatical”
Greg Boser, 3 Dog Media

Moderator: Matt Bailey

(Town hall style debate. The initials preceding the comment indicate who is speaking.)

MB: Apparently, no one wants to be labeled, so let’s start out by defining what “black hat” and “white hat”. So let’s start out by having Bruce and Jill define black hat and then let Greg and Todd define white hat.

BC: I think that black hat vs white hat are labels defined and applied by the search engines moreso than by the people in Search. The white hats tend to play in the middle of the acceptable area, the gray hats play near the edge of what is acceptable, and the people who are truly black hat are the people who consistently play in the truly unacceptable area. I think that if the only person you’re hurting is yourself, you can be black hat all you want; however, people who do pain to their paying clients — those are truly evil people.

JW: Black hat techniques are those methods that seek to decieve the search engines. There is spam and there are also “tricks” to make the engines believe your site is more releveant than it really is, or relevant to keywords that it’s actually not. Those “tricks” are definitely black hat.

TF: White hat people are those who print out and laminate the Google Webmaster Guidelines, hang them on their wall and worship them every night.

GB: White hat is a euphemism for “SEOs with no game”

DN: I don’t think I’ve ever seen a white hat site rank really really well in truly competitive verticals.

MB: It’s come up a couple of times that black hat techniques can get you in trouble, so we know there is risk there. However, is there any risk associated with white hat techniques?

JW: White hat is making your site the best it can be, so really that’s it, there’s no risk with having the best site you can have.

BC: The way I look at it, if you’re sitting at your laptop working on your website and Matt Cutts walks up behind you and your first inclination is to close your laptop — quickly — then you’re probably not playing by the rules. I think that if you’re doing things that are defendable in the face of inquiry and with the best of intentions, you can call yourself white hat.

TF: Look at cloaking, is it good? Is it evil? No, it’s agnostic. It’s a neutral technology that can be used properly or improperly.

GB: The crowd I run in, let’s face it, we do some stuff that is “pushing the envelope” for our own personal sites and we look at it as R&D that sometimes pays us lots of money. Those learning experiences help us be better SEOs in general.

JW: Let’s face it, there are white hats and black hats and then there are just plain old incompetent SEOs.

GB: There are a lot of people in this industry who just aren’t qualified to do the work. They take jobs they don’t have the experience or knowledge to handle properly and make promises they can’t keep. Then they’re in a position where they end up doing things they shouldn’t to make good on their unrealistic promises.

DN: You know what’s a big problem, it’s when yer working yer nuts off on a site and then you find out that yer not the only SEO who’s working on the site, and you start looking at it, and someone’s been buying links in an uncontrolled fashion and thinking it’s not leaving a footprint, when it’s really leaving a big footprint. Most of the big mistakes come from someone within the organization who makes a decision to “help” and they don’t really know what they’re doing and they’re doing more harm than good.

BC: People are looking at things like “should I invest the time building my site, making it expert, and building it into an authority site” or “should I just spend the money to buy 10,000 links and save all that time working on developing my site”. If you

JW: I’d like to say something about “rules”. You don’t need to read the Google rules, because it’s common sense. What’s within the lines and outside of the lines is all known. We’re all adults and you know what’s right and what’s wrong.

TF: I absolutely disagree that is common sense. If it were common sense, we wouldn’t have an industry that’s growing as fast as it is.

GB: Bruce is saying 3.5 years out versus 30 days out… I mean first of all I don’t see buying links as bad or evil. The approach we talk with clients is this… if the client comes to me and I tell them it’s going to take 3 years to get them to the top, that’s just unacceptable, so we split the difference. We’re always working with them to build a quality site so that when Google can actually accurately track and nuke the “bad guys” we will be the sole standing survivor, but until then we’re simultaneously using “quicker” methods to stay competitive to not only start realizing gains sooner, but to also get the client on board to start incorporating *all* of the SEO recommendations.

MB: So is black hat SEO appropriate for every site?

DN: No! There are verticals that do not need it. I mean if you’re in for the long haul and your industry isn’t full of people that are buying links and stuff then you can go and be white hat all you want.

Audience Question: If you build a widget and it links back to you but it’s on people’s Facebook pages (behind their logins) do those links count?

Panel: No!

DN: I’d make a Wordpress plugin or widget and that would be great, but Facebook, no.

[Random questions...]

BC: I don’t think buying links is essentially evil. It’s commerce.

TF: The goal of buying links is essentially link acquisition. Buying links just jumpstarts the process.

MB: In other words, Todd, you’re advocating “marketing”.

JW: Yeah, go hire a traditional PR firm.

BC: I don’t think a major, established brand should ever black hat.

GB: Yeah, you know, BMW did it and it totally burned them… for less than 48 hours. I disagree. I even wrote a blog post about it and said that big brands totally should spam search engines because they don’t suffer any repercussions like little people do. Look at BMW specifically, no one ever went into a BMW dealer and said “You’re cloaking! I’m going to go get a Mercedes!”

Matt Cutts: Ok, I just want to add a little disclaimer. I know the sites we take out, and not everyone outside of Google always knows who we take out. We don’t always make announcements. We absolutely take action on big sites, we just don’t always call them out.

GB: What about Forbes?

Matt Cutts: You’ll notice they no longer have pre-sell pages. There’s not always a need to call people out and pick on them. I think the question is, do you want to take that risk?

GB: Here’s the deal, the BMW work was so amateur. They did it sloppy and they got caught.

DN: I know Google is holding back some companies in the UK that ought to be topping the SERPs for link buying and it’s all hush hush.

Audience Question: So if we don’t buy links, what DO we do?

DN: Content (obviously, I mean I don’t want to say Content is King because that’s so cliche at this point)

JW: There’s public relations, there’s social…

GB: Yeah but even with social if you don’t pay someone to get it going on Digg it gets no traction anyway, so in the end it’s all paid.

JW: and also, just because Google says it’s evil doesn’t mean it really is “evil”.

seroundtable.com by Carolyn Shelby

What is the difference between an unremarkable no value add thin ecommerce site, and a top ranked site? In some industries the difference is simply site age. Sites that were around a few years ago had fewer competitors, so it was easier for them to rank. As they aged they got trusted more, and some of those top rankings lead to many self-reinforcing links.

If your site is brand new and you want to compete against established sites directly on their most important keywords then you need to be good at public relations, have a better brand strategy, or have some remarkable feature that makes people want to talk about you. Without conversation and links it is hard to pass up sites that have been accumulating links for years.

But what if you could roll back the clock, and quickly grab market leading positions? You can.

The easiest way is to buy an old site that is not well maintained, and then build it up. But if that is outside the scope of your budget or marketing strategy and you are trying to rank a new site the key is not to attack directly, but to attack indirectly.

Of course many of your product pages will contain keywords that are the same or similar to that which the competition is targeting, but the more obscure long tail words are going to be easier to rank for. Here are 7 strategies to help you get lucky with your ranking quickly:

Use the less popular version of a keyword. If most your competitors are targeting new york taxis but nobody is targeting newyork taxis then it is going to be easier to rank for that alternative version. And even if the alternate version only gets 5% or 10% the search volume of the related keyword, you are still going to pull in more traffic by ranking #1 for it than you would ranking #30 for the more popular version of the keyword.

Use many keyword modifiers. If you can’t rank for the core keywords then try to add some related keyword modifiers to the page title. Is credit cards too hard of a keyword? Then consider targeting a phrase like best credit cards.

Mix up your on page optimization. Rather than placing your keyword phrase all over the page consider mixing up how you use it. If the page title contains best credit cards consider using something like compare top credit card offers in the on page H1 header. Notice the change between plural and singular versions of the keywords. Popular CMS programs like Wordpress have plug ins like the SEO Title tag plug in that make it quite easy to vary your page title and on page heading.

Go deeper than the competition is going. In some fields I have been lucky enough to find niche low volume keyword topics that bring in a couple searchers each day. The ongoing maintenance cost of this content has been negligible, but as an added bonus for ranking for these long long tail keywords is that some of the people who search for them are people who really care about those topics, and many of them link to our websites. And so my new sites start benefiting from the self reinforcing effects that older sites benefit from, even though it is still new.

Move away from the commercial keywords. If you stay within a small basket of well known commercial keywords it is hard to compete with strong competitors that have been targeting them for years. Niche how to content that solves a searcher’s problems is likely to build inbound links. These inbound links boost your domain authority and pass PageRank internally to other pages on your site, which is much of the general goal of many SEO linkbait projects…some pages are good at building inbound citations while other pages leverage that link authority and generate revenue.

Buy traffic. If you build high quality niche content and it does not rank as well as you would like it to then you need to actively market it. Mention it to a couple popular bloggers in your space and ask them what they think of it. Another option for instantly getting relevant traffic to featured content is to buy targeted ads. StumbleUpon sells category based traffic for 5 cents a visitor, but this traffic is nowhere near as potent as search traffic - many of these visitors come and go quickly. You can also buy pay per click traffic for your quality content. If you are buying it for commercial keywords the cost per click can be significant, but if you are trying to promote a quality non-commercial topic that is linkworthy you can often get visitors from search and AdSense ads for less than 25 cents each. With the buying traffic to build links strategy, it can take hundreds of clicks to generate an inbound link, but when you consider how time consuming and expensive link building is, then $50 or $100 for a good link can be an outright bargain.

From: searchengineland by Aaron Wall

Many companies still don’t take advantage of SEO. There are many, however, that issue press releases on a regular basis. What they don’t understand is that press releases can be part of your SEO efforts, and can be used to gain presence in the editorial results of the search engines, even if it’s not a direct presence for your actual domain.

Press releases, in the traditional sense, were meant to reach out to journalists with the hope that a publication would pick it up, call someone within your company for comment, and gain a presence within the traditional media community (television, radio and/or print) to enhance your image and further your business.

Press releases in the digital media environment can do all of that, plus a bunch of other cool stuff. Even though many continue to issue press releases, few have made adjustments to their efforts to include press release optimization for the digital community and to further their interactive marketing — and specifically SEO — efforts.

By paying attention to a few important details, it’s possible to craft an interactive press release and create synergies within your other marketing efforts:

Step 1: Creation of the Press Release

Write for the editors you’re trying to reach traditionally, as well as the search engines.

• Headline: You must have a catchy headline or else no one — aside from the search engines — will read it. If you want the most from your efforts, include at least one relevant keyword phrase that people search for.
• Copy: Mention the keywords of focus for the release within the first paragraph.
• Linking: Many press release distribution companies allow you to include keyword-rich anchor text in links. These links should be directed to specific URLs within your Web site that, ideally, have a title tag, header tag, and content that supports this same keyword phrase. There’s great SEO value in having links on other Web sites linking to you, using keywords that you’d like to rank for within the anchor text of the link.
• Tags: Many distribution partners allow you to tag your press release with keywords that you’d like to have this release associated with.

Step 2: Distribution

Many companies offer varying levels of service for distribution. I’ll outline a few:

1. Business Wire. The leading source for press releases, photos, multimedia, and regulatory filings from companies and groups throughout the world, and suited for businesses of all sizes. Pricing for their optimized releases is currently $225 per release with a Business Wire circuit, and $295 if ordered standalone (a free membership to Business Wire is required). These releases via EON (Enhanced Online News) offer the use of anchor text and links, trackbacks, Web site preview, and customization of the permanent URL. This is also great for targeting long tail terms.
2. PRNewswire. More than just an online network, they’ll distribute through the traditional and interactive outlets. Hyperlinks are often removed from online releases, although the releases can rank well in the organic results. The newsline you select and the length of your news release determine the distribution cost. Each newsline covers a specific geographical area: local, regional, national, and international. Their optimized releases are included in US1 releases for $680 or can be added to any other release for an additional $255. Membership is $195 annually and releases start at $180 depending on the location you’re targeting.
3. PRWeb. Great for small to medium-sized businesses, PRWeb is a leader in online news and press release distribution:
   • Standard Visibility: Basic submission, inclusion on Google and Yahoo News, two-day distribution, $80.
   • Social Media: Basic plus social bookmarking links for increased Web 2.0 distribution (tagging, etc), $140.
   • SEO Visibility: Allows for controlling anchor text of links in the release, next day distribution, and advanced SEO statistics (keywords referring traffic to the release, etc.), $200.
   • Media Visibility: Guaranteed distribution through the AP and top U.S. newspapers, addition of embedded video, $360.
4. PRLeap. This newest and least expensive outlet also has the fewest press releases being submitted on a daily basis, and is great for smaller businesses. My company has successfully distributed press releases through this channel into Google’s universal results.
   • Basic: Google and Ask News inclusion, text links, inclusion in PRLeap RSS feed (600 word limit), $49.
   • Plus: Basic plus AP and UPI distribution, social media tagging/bookmarking, allows for one media attachment, and next day service (1,000 word limit), $99.
   • Premium: Plus benefits and allows for five media attachments (2,000 word limit), $149.

Step 3: Publish Press Releases on Your own Web Site

While you’re going through the trouble of creating and submitting all of these press releases for distribution, don’t forget to publish all of your press releases on your own Web site to aid your SEO efforts. The search engines love sites that add keyword-rich pages on a regular basis. The more pages, the better. And, if you can organize your press releases by category (similar to how you might organize blog posts), all the better.

One other note: if your press releases are posted correctly (i.e., a unique title tag, header, and other content), this will avoid duplicate content issues with the release that exists on the distribution partner’s Web site. There can be issues with other syndicators of this content (they may not go through the trouble of creating unique title tags, headers, etc.), but the good ones will rank.

From: searchenginewatch by Mark Jackson

Microsoft has announced that the company has expanded its deal with Facebook and will be integrating Microsoft’s Live Search into the social network.

This is big news for Live search, which has been languishing behind both Yahoo and Google in the search stakes for some time.

It is understood that Microsoft will utilise this deal to serve up advertising (both traditional and sponsored search results) through Facebook by the end of the year. Microsoft previously bought a $240 million stake in Facebook at a whopping $15 billion valuation, in exchange for global advertising rights.

This deal parallels the search deal that Google signed with MySpace in 2006, when it won the rights to provide search and advertising to the News Corp-owned social network. Thus far the deal has failed to produce any real results for Google as they have struggled to monetise the worlds largest social network, but it blames the under performance on the difficulty with monetizing social networks in general.

In May this year Microsoft launched what at the time seemed an apparently desperate move to actually pay users for using Live Search with a Cash back program. That initiative has, however, proven to be a success, increasing search usage by 15 per cent. But Live search still trails Google and Yahoo by huge margins, accounting for only 9 per cent of all search queries (Yahoo and Google account for 21 per cent and 62 per cent respectively).

From: nzherald.co.nz