Is there a dark side to SEO?

At a conference on SEO there was an interesting take on the good, the bad and the ugly of internet marketing and in particular the methods of SEO. Two distinct “sides” emerged or are presently known about in this industry and that is white hat SEO and black hat SEO.

Now the colours given to each obviously speak volumes about the feelings associated with each. White hat SEO naturally takes on a more purer form as the colour would suggest and black hat SEO has a more ominous feel to it, something almost villainy and illegal.

While there may be strong feelings about both of these methods any business person is faced with the same options no matter what business they are in or where they do their business. There is always the choice of taking the longer route and getting a payout later or doing things the shorter more not so required way and getting a fast payout but standing to lose more also. They say that business is either a gamble or an investment.

Black hat SEO is said to be a gamble

The general consensus by SEO’s is that black hat SEO is a rather dangerous gamble and yet much like reality we find people heavily engaged in this type of internet marketing. It is not right to paint one method with a brush and say that it is right and that the other is wrong but it is important to highlight the consequences of these SEO. Black hat SEO employs many unpopular methods for acquiring page rank in the search engines and very often it deliberately goes against what the search engines require.

The resultant outcomes of this are that very soon the website is banned on the search engine and that client has to dissolved the webpage altogether. This is not to say that a considerable amount of money has not been made in the meanwhile.

For the love of money

Any business owner that decides to go the route of black hat SEO has either one of the following options in mind: a quick cash take in, no regard for their brand or they do not intend to ever build a credible business on the internet. The reasons for this are that once a client has been banned by the search engines that site will never again be profitable on the net.

Many black hat SEO’s actually anticipate that their sites will be blocked and actually plan financially for that time. They then spend more time using the same tactics to promote other short sites all the while expecting to be banned. Any business that considers itself a true business will have to think hard about that type of approach and what kind of branding they will be creating by using black hat SEO.

At the end of the day it does come down to what the individual or individuals’ long term plans are for their sites. If they are looking to build a credible and lasting internet business then black hat SEO is definitely not the way to go as it violates the ordinances of search engines code of practice.

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This entry was posted on Sunday, September 20th, 2009 at 9:10 am and is filed under SEO. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.