Why Black Hat SEOs Never Go White
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This article will look at the motives that move practitioners of SEO to delve into unethical practices. It's not going to be a "scientific" article examining birth experience or such; it's going to be as plain and as honest as I can make it. I will draw from personal experience on Internet fraud, SEO and hours spent poring over black hat SEO techniques.
The websites used as models of black hat SEO here are self proclaimed practitioners of the arts. They inspired the title of this article with their excuses (self serving?) as to the reasons why they started practicing black hat SEO, and why they consider "white hats" or practitioners of ethical SEO to be "losers" or "slow on the uptake." Sometimes they just claim that honest SEO practices are not as effective as their "dark arts."
"Never knock another man's racket; you never know when you will be doing it.
-- Mafia Manager by V
I wrote the quote above because I am almost always leery of bashing techniques others are using; no one knows what will catch on tomorrow. However in this case black hat practitioners have exhibited such cockiness in their self serving statements that I was moved to just launch a rant. Honestly, it's ridiculous how self-righteous black hat SEOs get when explaining themselves. Still, I decided to look at their side and let the readers decide. We will look at some of their own words and techniques and their reasoning, and see parallel reasoning in the minds of several types of criminal elements, such as phishers, scammers and fraudsters.
Parallel Reasoning
Here's a bit of personal experience that I believe gives me a clear view of why black hat practitioners think the way they do, and how their reasoning is similar to the way that certain kinds of criminal elements think. Throughout my teens and university years, I lived in a neighborhood with a high crime rate. During this period a lot of my peers took the "easy" route to money and respect. Some close friends of mine became leaders of major Internet scam rings, including credit card scams; I saw the evolution of the Nigerian Scam letter from the end of the perpetrators and not the victims. These led to a rash of drop outs and young millionaires. I was considered the geeky loser who slogged through textbooks of mechanics and studied Internet technologies as a sideline. Note that all this time (and even till this day) these individuals were my close buddies; I ate their food and knew their parents.
As a web developer I have seen first hand the rings of click fraud specialists. When it comes to SEO. I am a registered member of several "black hat" SEO forums such as www.syndik8.com and www.blackhatseotools.com. I read their posts and study their spamming techniques. And I have seen thought patterns similar to those of the scam letter proponent appear in their threads and discussions.
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