Comments on: Black Hat SEO Isn’t Employable

By: Doug Heil

Doug Heil — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 13:59:47 +0000

Hi Lisa, Oh yes, I hope we can meet and talk face to face as well.

By: Lisa Barone

Lisa Barone — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 13:59:07 +0000

Andy: There’s no twilight zone happening at We Build Pages. Obviously there’s a white hat and black hat way to do everything, and we’re sticking to the clean, Google-approved way. I think it’s natural we have some folks doubting that we’ve cleaned up our act, but all I can say is that you’ll see in time, Andy, you’ll see.

By: Andy Beard

Andy Beard — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 10:41:43 +0000

From what I still define as the “Twilight Zone” WBP might also be working in it.

Affiliate programs with clean links or redirects
Widget SEO
Creative mashups of 3rd party content
Blog networks as opposed to link farms

It is the area where a Google engineer, if pushed for an answer, would start his reply with “It depends…”

By: Lisa Barone

Lisa Barone — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 21:14:06 +0000

Terry: No, you’re absolutely right. We Build Pages has never been black hat and I shouldn’t have lumped us into that category. That said, I personally think we were a little darker than we should have been, which is why we’ve stopped buying links. But that’s the extend of our ‘evil’ ways. I appreciate you taking the time to correct me. Thanks.

By: Terry Van Horne

Terry Van Horne — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 17:37:13 +0000

Lisa, with all due respect at no time was We Build Pages doing anything blackhat. Buying links has always been on the table and always should be, regardless of what Google says. IMO, WBP were doing what an overweighted link algo told you could enable you to provide sustainable rankings with the lowest risk. I and others reviewed WBP and we didn’t see schemes. Even the paid links were not of the variety reviewers believed could hurt clients. There were questions about how they were obtained but… at that time there was no one trying to tell promoters how to promote their site.

Personally I wasn’t comfortable determining the intent of WBP when they did it. Likely because I don’t come to a review believing I can read minds and intent. What I saw could easily be just someone buying targeted links for traffic. Which in the 15 years I’ve been doing this is neither bad or anything but Web Marketing 101!

Plaease, Jim, etal don’t validate the assinine thought that buying links was blackhat when you were doing it! It wasn’t!

By: Lisa Barone

Lisa Barone — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 14:17:18 +0000

Andy: If you have a site as massive, trusted and needed in the SERPs as Amazon, okay. If not, well, good luck with that.

By: Dan Kramer

Dan Kramer — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 13:40:46 +0000

This from an original black hat: my commercial sites are all white hat now. And doing well in the SE’s.

By: Lily

Lily — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 08:16:43 +0000

White makes me look fat! Kidding. I am white as snow

By: Peter Young

Peter Young — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 20:10:27 +0000

Think your line

“You can’t hold on to big clients if you’re burning sites. No one is going to pay you to get them banned; they’re paying you to get them results.”

Spot on

By: Andy Beard

Andy Beard — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 19:25:35 +0000

I like playing in the realm of “well Amazon, ABC and XYZ” get away with it. Still risk.

I don’t think of it as white, black or grey, it is more like “The Twilight Zone”