The Parable Of The White Hat & The Black Hat
When linking here, for some reason people keep describing this blog’s content as grey and black hat. I’m flattered but I actually couldn’t disagree more. If anything I’m trying to make some serious noise to the white hats and encouraging them to learn some new tricks, but most seem to be covering their ears with enthusiasm. La la la la I can’t hear you! On that note there’s an interesting long-term debate going on disputing whats better, black hat or white hat? Did I say interesting? I meant boring and completely bullshit. Saying you like black hat better doesn’t make you a black hat. Likewise, showing your disgust for black hats without learning it doesn’t even make you a white hat. In my opinion until you take the time to learn and develop both skills to the fullest extent there’s only one classification for you….Amateur.
So with that I’m going to attempt to make the ultimate white hat post by telling the ever famous parable of The White Hatter and The Black Hatter. You may have already heard it. If you’re not familiar, a parable is a short story, often fictional, told to illustrate a lesson or morale. If that still doesn’t ring any bells then you should read the Bible more you heathen. There are several in there. I’m kidding of course. I respect your religion now matter what it is. 
and Yes, there will be real techniques you can use hidden within the story.
The Black Hatter And The White Hatter - When Two Pros Meet
Once there was a white hatter. He had a great website that ranked #1 in a competitive niche. He had many fans of his site and it got lots of search engine traffic from his primary keyword. Suddenly one week while checking up on his site he noticed another high quality site in his niche moving up quickly in the ranks. It was also a very nice site with lots of value. The White Hatter didn’t think much of it because of his own solid rankings but knew he better watch this site more closely due to it’s upward momentum. Suddenly one day after a small SERP update the site he was watching moved into the #2 slot right under him. This started to make him nervous because he knew the differences in income between the number one and number two slots. He has gotten very comfortable in the number one position and had no intentions of giving it up.
Once there was a black hatter. He created a few Made For Adsense sites across a couple hundred niches. They were fairly uniform. Some performed well, some performed poorly. By chance of fate one of these sites was in the White Hat’s niche. Since this was a competitive niche his site quickly caught the attention of the lower positioned sites that were still struggling amongst themselves for the #2 slot. The black hatter’s site was doing fairly well in this niche and making a couple bucks a day. It wasn’t ranking for any major terms within the niche, but since the niche was such a good one it was still bringing him some solid residual and he was very happy. The rest of the site owners within the niche, angered by his intrusion, quickly took action against his black hat site. After a few legal threats and a bunch of complaints to everyone possible they were finally successful and got the black hatter’s site taken down and banned. Once entered and realizing the potential of the niche the Black Hatter reluctantly took the site down and built a clean site for competition within the niche. There’s no point in letting such a great niche go he thought. So he built a very clean and high quality site and aimed it directly at the most competitive keyword. He built up the site nicely and quickly. While the other lower sites within the niche fought amongst themselves and spent their time combating the endless supply of spam entering their niche he focused on building the link count required for the number one position. It wasn’t very long before he managed to grab the number 2 slot. Things were going well except that number one site in his way was clearly going to be a force to be reckoned with. He was going to have to pull off something slick.
By this time the site had the full attention of the White Hatter. He started watching the inbound links and site content of the Black Hatter’s site intently. It seemed fairly even. In fact this site even managed to get many of the same link spots he had as well as a few new ones. The site had lost its momentum but still a worthy adversary for the top spot. The White Hatter watched in dismay as his site and the other bounced back and forth between the top two positions. He continued building links and working on his site. Suddenly without notice, the other site took the top position and it stuck. The opponent kept it and wasn’t budging. The White Hatter had to figure out why and quickly. Both sites had a solid number of links at about 45k-50k and almost all were at least relevant. He started investigating all the inbound links and finally one day found something very odd. This other site had about 10,000 new inbound links from random Blogspot accounts.
The Black Hatter knew he wasn’t going to take down this monstrous number one site by playing clean. He had to do something drastic. So he whipped up some scripts and grabbed a list of the top 1,000 or so keywords for the niche and created some Blogspot accounts accordingly. He populated them from a popular RSS Aggregator and made sure each page had a link to his main money site. With the added link popularity he easily took the number one position and wasn’t budging. He didn’t want these Splogs to get quickly banned and knew later on he would need their link age so he did the responsible black hat thing and gave each post credit to the original and left all the ads out. He also knew not to continuously create too many and draw attention. He had to keep his numbers just high enough to gain and maintain his position and stop it there and just consistently update each blog once it’s established. After all the big money was in his big clean money site and he knew it.
The White Hatter definitely received a big blow to his business and had no intentions of taking it lying down. He created a crawler and using the footprints within the Blogspot templates started compiling a list of all the accounts made. He located a large portion of the 10,000 accounts and started investigating where all their content was coming from. They were clearly feed scrapes. So he took all the post titles and scanned common RSS Aggregators. He found it! They were coming from Google Blog Search. The White Hatter was smart. He knew if he started panicking and throwing a fit and trying to get Blogspot and the search engines to delete and ban all these accounts it would do him no good. The other site could easily generate them faster than he could ever get them deleted. It was clearly a futile effort and he knew it. Time for a workable plan. So he had to hit the Blogspot accounts where it hurts. He used his crawler to scrape all the titles of almost all the scraped posts created. The White Hatter then concocted a script to ping Google Blog search with all the same post titles as was in his list. He injected links to his site within the article content as well as put himself as the source. Unfortunately, the scraper was smart enough to remove all the html from the feeds but he still got to keep the original link within each and every post. He knew that if each of these post titles managed to get grabbed by the Black Hatters scraping script than they would surely get snagged again once all the blogs got updated and he fed them into the aggregator. It worked. All the new posts on all the spammy Blogspot accounts now had a link to his site. This evened the playing field. Whenever the Black Hatter’s site got a link, his site got a link. However this wasn’t acceptable, the black hat site still had all the previous post links and was barely beating him. Something had to get done about that. All these links had to be devalued. So the White Hatter opened up his Askimet filter logs and started scanning for domains that were banned in the engines. Once he managed to find a couple hundred so he started slowly feeding them to the Blogspot accounts through the Google Blog Search feed. He kept the same post titles knowing they would get scraped yet again and he made a balanced mixture of putting his site as the source of the post as well as the banned domains that way they would both get links.
By this time the Black Hatter, with his position secure, had already moved on to his next niche. Suddenly one day he noticed a large drop in revenue. His site had lost the number one position and was back in the battle for the first two spots. “What the hell is going on?!” he thought. He looked at his Blogspot scripts to find the source of the problem. He quickly noticed that not only was his accounts giving his main competitor links but they weren’t worth a shit because he was also linking to a bunch of banned pharmaceutical sites, putting every Splog he created into bad neighborhoods. His efforts were worthless and he knew why and more importantly how. It was time to face a tough decision. He could either endlessly combat this guy, who obviously knew his stuff, to keep his current revenue or he could move on and continue to focus on new niches and creating new revenue for himself. He couldn’t help but laugh about it. So he emailed the White Hat and expressed his respect for the competitive exchange. There was no point in furthering it and they both decided to call it quits and just exchange links on the main page to help lock in their positions and let the algorithms decide from there who was better. After considering it a draw they both went their separate ways.
The Moral Of The Story
Interpret it however you want but recognize the fact that the White Hat defended himself. He didn’t just roll over or waste his time throwing a fit trying to get the inevitably endless supply of black hat sites banned or deleted. He knew his opponents tricks and thus was well equipped to combat them. He stood his moral stance and did what he had to, in order to protect his business. No matter where you stand on the issue you can respect that.
If you hear anyone whining and crying about black hats or white hats please politely explain to them that there are no black or white hats. Only amateurs, experts, and people who are willing to learn how to protect and grow their businesses then send them this story.
ep1c b4ttl3
You forgot the part where the Blue hat comes out of no where and knocks the white and black hats to the 2nd and 3rd positions!
Dru, what did I tell you about giving away the last chapter of stories?
*stern look*
Eli,
You tell a kick ass story!
Keep up this stuff…this is what keeps me checking your blog almost daily!
Hehe, great little story.. My old agency posted a link of SEO blogs yesterday and had bluehat was under “grey/black hat blogs”, but they redeemed themselves by writing:
“(Because it’s important to keep up to date with what shady tactics are being used, and sometimes these guys share extremely valuable white-hat tricks and tips)”
I sometimes get people bitch at my that I shouldn’t be preaching grey/black hat stuff, perhaps I should keep a copy of that story on my clipboard.. Nice one, Eli. I enjoyed reading that.
excellent story, not very Biblical but quite dramatic. Mind if i write a movie script on this?
I’ll sign over the rights just as long as you replace webmasters with Spartans and search engines with Persians. I think it’ll sell better that way
That was quite a tale. I love how you added in some solid tips. Like re-tagging an rss feed to get scooped up by mr “blackhats” and gain some free linkage.
By the way, I don’t know how I am going to continue reading this blog. So far, after just reading for a few weeks, I have to make 100 niche sites for 5 networks, some “link laundering” sites, feeder blogspot blogs, and make other social real estate grabs.
I tend to believe that most activities can be done “blackhat” or “whitehat” depending on the situation. For instance, I can legitimately gain a link from a comment on a blog that does not have nofollow (rant) and be within bounds of being “whitehat.” However, I could have written a program that generates at random some sort of message promoting my site. Possibly getting cleaver with it, potentially pulling some information about keywords found within the post and potentially trick you into thinking its a legit comment (albeit a little oddly worded).
That being said. How did you like my script?
I suspect your parable is more realistic than many realize, Eli. For instance, I read recently about one BH who was buying expensive, expiring domains, then filling them with computer-generated content. He was complaining that the sites weren’t lasting long enough in the SERPS to see a decent ROI. I think he was so ingrained with BH, he failed to realize he could fill the sites with genuine content from inexpensive Asian writers, so they would last longer and generate a significant ROI over the long-haul.
Conversely, I wonder how many WHs realize how easy it is to rank for low-competition keywords with some simple link-spamming techniques and tactics?
So, here’s an effective strategy for combining WH and BH:
1. Buy a cheap, expiring domain;
2. Create some genuine and key-word targeted content (go for a mid/low niche and target only money keywords that you’ll think will convert);
3. Get some genuine links & do some lite (but consistent) link spamming;
4. Test and refine;
5. Voila – success!
Another entertaining post, Eli!
Excellent point.
There are actually quite a few very solid tips for both black hatters and white hatters in the story. Here’s a few you may not have picked up on in your first read.
1) Use auto generated sites to find and test new niches. You may be the highest foremost keyword research expert in the world, but nothing will help you find more golden niches than throwing up a few hundred MFA sites.
2) Use blackhat sites to boost your site’s rankings while keeping your site clean. No offsite factor can ever get your domain banned or devalued. So if your site is physically 100% whitehat there is nothing your competition can do about you going apeshit nuts on blackhat to help boost it. They can’t hurt you, they can only help. So use blackhat networks to boost your white hat networks.
3. The narks never win. Their roll and behavior in the story is so commonly true in this business. and with that blackhats and white hats use their own motivation and knightly drive against them every day. The two sites in the story will firmly stick in the first two positions because the rest of the sites are keeping themselves down and focusing on combating spam. Focusing on maintaining your earnings is a luxury for the number one company in an industry. Everyone else needs to be focused on going upwards.
4. Also, I introduced the concept of “Black Hole SEO” It’s the affectionately darker version of black hat seo. It’s where you steal traffic and links from black hat sites in mass. Sounds like a fucked up ass backwards concept right? I can assure you, it is very real & people already do it. So black hats beware you’re the next victims
I got a competitor who is buying good expired domains and catching up on my site which has ruled our niche for years.
I’m pretty white, out of ignorance and fear of upsetting google mostly, but I’ld be happy to be blue.
Should I just start buying too (but where does he find these great pr4 domains with yahoo and loads of other respectable links?) Or what other blue hat techique would you recommend to stop him taking over from me in the serps.
I have seen the light!
Hi Eli,
great posting, i became a daily reader of your blog
I don’t know if you remember but you said me I can send you an email with a small concept for a website-network.
Have you received it and had time to read?
Perhaps if you answer me you can give me a little tip how to find bh spam sites and their sources to use them for linking me
greetings from austria
Thanks,
I responded to both your emails awhile ago actually. Check your junk mail. In fact the Checkmate:Google Images post was made to help you out with your first question email.
Greetings from USA
its incredible… i received really no email. And at both email-adresses i have not activated an junk-filter…
perhaps you have a copy of your replies and can send them to karl.kowald@k-solutions.at
would be kind of you. Thanks Charly
I forwarded the one i could find, but i think it was actually a third question. The other two are probably answered from my office. So I’ll see about retrieving and forwarding them on monday.
great, thank you, I received that email now.
Just a detail question about google. Do you use Analytics and webmastertools from google for your network sites and if yes, from one account or everyon with a different google account
thanks
Charly
Haha. Stupid whitehat.
Great post.
You are a fantastic educator, Eli! Thanks very much!!
One question:
When the White Hatter concocted a script to ping Google Blog search with all the same post titles as was in the list and injected links to his site within the article content as well as put himself as the source, was he:
1. Creating a feed of those posts (that he injected links into) without there being an actual post?
2. Posting the titles that he injected links into to a site, then pinging Google Blog Search to let them know of the new posts?
3. Other?
answers yes to both 1 and 2. You create a standard rss feed. You put your url as the guid or source and permalink on all the posts. but each post title is actually one of the scraped titles. You can put whatever you want for the actual rss content. You can also put html into the post content but often black hatters will remove all the html out of it.
Then you ping or submit the feed to googleblog search. Googleblog search indexes all the feeds and fake posts. Then when the black hatters grab more rss feeds searching for their terms it grabs all your posts. So every post they use for their content has a link to your website. A smart black hatter always gives proper credit to the source to avoid trouble.
By all theory of Black Hole SEO you can get several millions of links to a website within a few days by feeding rss scrapers content through popular rss aggregators(google blog search, yahoo blogsearch. etc.).
Black Hole SEO is also a very powerful affiliate marketing tool, but ya know how I do business.
I introduce the concept first, get you comfortable with the applications of it then explain it in detail. So I can assure you there will be a post that clears all this up. Until then just let it roll around the brain so you can at least have some ideas of what it can be used for, for when i explain how to do it.
Very nice! Since having the same headline with different content would not be very offensive to most white hat bloggers, it’s “barely scraped” at all.
that was a nice little story. I hink i got the moral and some good tips im gonna be trying out.
did you wrote this story because of my www.google.com/search?q=whitehats+suck
lol @tobsn
a nice guerilla marketing action
Great article eli. I have never really been sure on white and black hat techniques since i am fairly new to this but this explained alot to me
http://digg.com/security/Whitehat_Vs_Blackhat_Parabole
Great story, Eli. It was right before bed and all! Keep up the good posts!
Zebra hats rule!
Hey Eli,
Excellent post as usual. The nice thing about your method is that you kindly share & force us to think. I have some questions on this post:
Let´s assume for this question that the WH owner is not aware of these practices and he can´t initiate the process you explained to fight back the BH website (I am asumming this because it will happen on many cases and also because probably if the white hat guy would do what you suggest on your post the questions I am about to ask would not have much sense…correct me please if I am wrong)
1 - If I am not getting the idea wrong, the BH website achieves #1 position based on link velocity. I mean, you are getting a huge boost on your SERPS based on your link acquisition rate, right? Probably competition has tons of quality incoming links that had been there for a long while so this is the only approach we have to fight against that. So…
a) How long does it take to see the effects of link velocity collapse? I am not 100% sure about this but it would seem logic that although you may give credit to scraped content authors and avoid aff+adsense schemes on your blogs (to avoid splogs and get some time value for those links) once the link building rate starts to decrease, the superior value of incoming links on the WH Website would take the lead again.
b) If point “a” is correct, would you just keep on building those blogs for incoming links(blogspot,squidoo,wp blogs, etc also) with long tail kwds? If yes, wouldn´t we have a limit? (We have a finite number of variations I guess to work on regarding keywords). What would you do then in that case? Just do the same on different authority platforms such as Squidoo, etc?
If you do this, would you be already thinking about the fact that in the meanwhile you are expanding your blogspot domains age and getting more authority & value from those links? Would that just be enough or would you still add value from high PR and more authoritative websites (probably from your own networks)?
I am not sure if my reasonings may sound 100% logical to all here, but it seems to me that the key issue is to define not only your expected link building velocity rate (BTW would be great if you could share how we are supposed to estimate this rate in a way that may not get us flagged…what do you compare and how you define your metrics) but also how do we have to mix in the recipe low value links from these blogs we´re building with more authoritative links.
Also, for how long are we supposed to keep on repeating the process to keep ranking within SERPS?
To end this question, since it seems we gonna have on time natural constraints based only on this method for our BH (unless you have tons of quality incoming links) I guess like Dru mentioned that sthing else is coming along (Blue Hat) to back-up your BH website. And I say “back-up” cus I am following the logic line…but who knows…maybe this BH website was a diversion and the Blue Hat stuff will take the lead later. I am sure you will tell us in the future how this goes on
2 - If, when analyzing the BH linking structure, the WH webmaster notices tons of incoming links from other platforms besides blogspot, would you extent the process to all the cases where you can add your rss feed? Would it always be so obvious where the BH links are coming from?
3 - It seems that the method you explain here would also be useful for getting more incoming links on your black hat affiliate projects. Usually we would find much more splogs but since on these short-term affiliate schemes we are talking about third party domains and javascript redirects (combined with other forum posters, guestbook posters, image galleries posters, etc)feasible of getting banned soon …there would be no problem…what do you think?
Thanks again for your shares and time. Keep it up!
Cheers,
Nick
Impressive insight. I can tell you really read deep into that post and understood it.
Often times you are right, very rarely can the average white hatter combat a blackhatter with a white hat site. In the story I did not specify a time frame between events. So this could of happened over a year or over a month. So link velocity is not really in question in this particular example although it is a factor just due to the fact that he “rose quickly.”
So if we’re talking strictly theory here. Lets assume he had high link velocity because he was gaining quickly. Perhaps a real life physics example would explain it best. You have two lugers on the same sled going down two different hills. One is going down a straight 45degree angle hill and the other is going down a steady bell curve(where the decline drops quickly but then levels out). Given a long enough plane each sledder will at one point reach their terminal velocity. So which sledder will make it to the finish line first? It depends on the length of the track. The same principle could be applied to SEO world and reaching the top of the SERPS. You have two sites that are both going to gain X amount of links with the exact same sites that are all ranked within slots 1-N. The sites at the top will give you more authority quicker, but will eventually plateu and the link velocity will start to level off and eventually almost plateu. Where as starting from the bottom and gaining links going up the totem pole will start off slowly but the velocity will raise with each new link. So the same physics example above would naturally apply. Which method of link velocity will get you to the top of the SERPS the first? It depends on how many sites you are talking about (the length of the track)and how high up it goes(the amount of authority given by the top sites).
From the story’s point of view its impossible to tell which link order he went in to achieve his remarkable results. It can be assumed that he went with the 45degree approach because he did not initialy approach the white hat for a link. Also, it was said that the other white hat sites below him fought amongst themselves and couldn’t compete with the top site. So my guess is that he started from the bottom and worked his way up, with each link his velocity grew and grew which is why the white hatter didn’t notice him until it was nearly too late. Because by that time his velocity was so high and gaining even faster than the white hatter could maintain himself. There was no sign of him slowing down. Which would of been implied if he started at the top and worked his way down. So yes, if you’re with me so far the BH got to #1 using his link velocity.
On to your next point. “How long does it take to see the effects of link velocity collapse?” The effect of course is only perceptive to a third party. Each site within the serps naturally has upward moment. Once they cross the finish line they will continue to coast due to the momentum sustained. So your site are only going to raise according to your own velocity vs their current momentum. This is why new sites tend to show up so quickly in the top 100. The rest of the sites below the top 100 have very low momentum and your site has such high velocity you pass them very quickly. However you can be gaining 10 positions/day at one point but once you reach the breaking point(top 25) it starts slowing down dramatically. This is due to the “relevant link brick wall” as mentioned in another post as well as your link velocity is coming close to matching their current momentum. No matter how fast your momentum is, sometimes you will encounter sites at the top whos current momentum is still higher than your velocity. Which is why the black hatter had to resort to drastic link boosts(using his blogspot accounts). Obviously the time it takes for the actual links to count is equal to the time it takes for them to get recognized by the engines, for their results to appear is only when they become live in the datacenters(impossible for us commoners to know). It all will eventually happen so its not so much when as how rapidly. People often make the mistake of only looking for links that already exist in the engines, or will exist. Why? You have just as much power as getting a document into the index as any other webmaster, whats wrong with getting a link placed and then forcing it into the index yourself through third party inbound links. This concept is perfectly described in my “Document Links” post as well as “link laundering sites.”
To get to the “would you just keep on building those blogs for incoming links?” point. The answer is apparent in my SERP Domination post as well as outlined in this post. Building up a secondary network is a primary key in gaining an authoritive boost(*see ref. keyword real estate post). However there is a cap to it if using it for link building. Lets say you create 10 spammy blogger accounts. This is dealable with blogger.com. You are well below their radar and chances are the blogs will stick given no outside influences. The same principle could be duplicated so you have 10,000 blogger accounts. The actual number doesn’t matter, its blogger’s threshhold that matters. Eventually they will start systematically deleting your blogs. The more you create the more footprints you leave. The more footprints you leave the faster they can be automatically deleted. Eventually you reach your terminal velocity and you are creating accounts just as fast as they are deleting them(talk to any power myspace spammer about that one). The blackhatter knew this. There was an obvious trade off between the velocity and link age. He knew he would soon need the “aged links” to maintain his rankings so he only made enough blogspot accounts to keep himself under the radar and he probably made them slowly and carefully with little or no footprints. He probably lost quite a few but once he reached 10k that was sticking he was smart and left them and didn’t build any more. This gave him just enough links to boost his link velocity upward without compromising his link age, which would help in keeping the momentum he would need later to maintain the rank consistantly.
I think that covered all except your last point, which could simply be answered by “it depends.” Go as high as you have to never as high as you can. As mentioned in the SERP domination post, you don’t have to be big you just have to be larger than everyone else.
Boy those were two long ass comments
I’m not sure how I’ve avoided this site until now but I’m here now and subscribing immediately. I can’t stand people pissing and moaning about black hats beating them out of some ranking! Deal with it! Get better!
could not agree more.
best find of the week.
This is a great story. I would have had to just throw in the towel on this and settled for second or worse.
Eli,
Thanks again for your 100% generous consideration of all of us willing to learn.
After reading your comments now, the whole thing is starting to make much more sense to me. Actually, I read your SERP Domination post after reading this one (my mistake sorry). Now it seems more clear how we are supposed to combine your different methods in the altogether plan.
Just one thing, would be great to understand precisely what you are refering to when talking about a “website´s momentum”.
Keep it up! =)
One thing Eli, I was at a musuem recently and saw a test where two balls went down two tracks, one was a bell curve and one was a straight line. They started and eneded at the same level (so the bell curve ball had to travel farther because it wasn’t a straight line) the bell curve ball finishes WAY ahead of the straight line because of velocity, inspite of the distance.
I found this interesting in light of the “One is going down a straight 45degree angle hill and the other is going down a steady bell curve” example above.
You’re absolutely right.
“Given a long enough plane each sledder will at one point reach their terminal velocity.”
Wow Eli, your a busy man!
That was the best summer blockbuster, i have read in some time.
Good shit, good shit man.
Aye. BH/WH is
1) A valuable marketing/PR concept
2) Two very different ways of working. Those passionate and serious about their craft study both, and in detail.
Working ain’t whining. It’s paying the bills and hopefully having some fun along the way, one way or another paying the bills and sleeping easy at night.
Myself, sure I keep the “report abuse” addys among my many bookmarked tools. They go under a folder titled “ratting / being a lil’ bitch” that I keep for political protocol coverage. Like if/as situations ever arise that I’ll need to tell someone “OK, we’ve called to the mountain now. This isn’t an avelanche, so let’s nobody go batshit. Stop calling Sherpa and let him think and get to work.” Assuming that service commitment is something that’s been sold in, that is.
WHWs should read the bit about “framing” (no, not HTML frames) in Aaron Wall’s book, and also Rand’s concession about “keep my house” in his WH/BH debate with EarlGray of Syndk8.
I noticed that in the story, bot the white hatter and the black hatter had about 45K links most of which were relevant. How on earth can a black hatter get relevant links in such a mass scale so quickly?
Also, I don’t suppose anyone’s heard of a blogspot account creating software?
Thx,
Alex
Not to divulge but the black hatter got his links the same way the white hatter did starting out. If you know what to look for gaining large amounts of relevant links is easy. I got a post coming up on that soon.
As far as the blogspot account generation
there used to be a commercial one called voodoo blogger but it got shut down and the owner of it was caught stealing peoples accounts and recording all their stuff. Now its all done with custom scripts.
There is always BloggerGenerator–it’s at least updated regularly. It ain’t pretty, but it gets the job done.
Thanks Eli and kansieo for your replies!
You don’t know how bad I need links right now
I’m currently writting a script for the 100 links / hour technique and I’ll definitely try BloggerGenerator (or write something myself).
I’m still intrigued by the possibility of mass numbers of relevant links (I assume one-way). I’ve been researching this for a few months now and the only things I can think of that are white-hat enough is either linkbaiting through social sites or some sort of RSS feeds (but not like the ones in the 100links/h post). I don’t suppose doing a backlink analysis of the #1 site and e-mailing every site owner in the list still works….
I’m not too sure though because the black hat vs white hat scenario mentions how the site lost it’s momentum which I don’t think is very applicable to these two methods.
Anyway, I guess I’ll just have to wait for Eli’s post.
Thanks again Eli & kansieo, I appreciate it!
Great tale - I think the pull of the dark side is strong for most SEOers.
It’s easy to be pure white if you’re one of the gurus but for the rest of us the odd touch of grey to win can be appealing…
I have a white hat site that has 50 backlinks so far. All legit one ways.
How many blogspot backlinks would be to much at first? Or in the wrong ratio?
10k is a lot but not compared to the 40-50k overall in the example.
I read you said that nothing external would hurt my site but others have said that if you have to many “spammy” backlinks it would affect the white hat site. True?
Thanks!
Poetic, and compelling with a ton of smooth strategy thrown in for good measure. Awesome post!
Entertaining AND informative… good job!
It’s an interesting input into the black hat / white hat debate. I like how it seems to just come down to being smart and doing what you have to do to get ahead.
white, grey, black..whatever. we’re all internet marketers and we’re all shady in some way or another.
The more google changes and gets smarter the more we will have to resort to more shady techniques. Just my 2 cents
I truly enjoyed this parody. Thank you for defining the truth behind the terms.
The White Hat: “He didn’t just roll over or waste his time throwing a fit trying to get the inevitably endless supply of black hat sites banned or deleted. He knew his opponents tricks and thus was well equipped to combat them.”
SUPERB, I guess all white hat SEO’s, to be the best, have to learn and understand the opponents darstidly tricks!
nice post
Very nice read. Is this a true story? Either way you do bring up a very good point. Advanced SEO marketers are able to secure the top positions, period! I think the term “content is king” is over emphasized in the Internet world, especially from the SERPs’ perspective.
Of course its a true story, its happenning all over the web. Whats also happenning is thats the white hat guy is too stupid and holds onto the belief that google will punish the blackhatter, until he looses his business.
I think if you know Black Hat…you’re God.
I too think if you know Black Hat…you’re God. Loll!
Amazing parabole.
Great resource.
Awesome post. Thanks.
Interesting article, always worth remembering that you gota believe in your own techniques bit if they aint working you gota adapt!
One of the great and also not so great things about having an e commerce website on the internet is having to know white hat, black hat and grey hat tactics and methods of gaining traffic, higher pr, serps…………………
If I only knew then- 1999, what I know now I would have truly been ahead of my time.