Black Hat SEO, a Necessary Evil - Search Engines Play God
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What makes a website designer or marketer explore the dark side? It is a journey that begins with the request of a client for "traffic." My search engine experience began when my first client for my web site skills (my dad) requested hits. I discovered the CONTENT and DESCRIPTION Meta tags soon after, but by the time I had gone up a few grades in the school of hard knocks (actual time spent building dozens of websites for "I want it done by yesterday" clients who weren't my blood relatives), I started looking for the code to Google's page ranking algorithm.
To put it simply, if you want lots of traffic online, you have to optimize for search engines. Search is the number one activity online, and it is the major way people find content, products, and businesses. Then Google revolutionized adverts with Adsense and affiliate programs. CPA and PPC programs now ensure that there is a lot of money to be made from just generating hits.
Combine the above with search engines whose only loyalty is to traffic towards themselves, and who periodically change algorithms and indices used in indexing sites. It's easy to see how somebody could get very desperate to get traffic by "any means necessary"
All SEO is evil
The search engines view any attempt to manipulate your rankings as bad. It shows up the weakness in what is supposed to be an impartial or perfect ranking system. It may allow a poor, irrelevant site to become number one. This will make traffic go to other search engines, seeking more relevant results. Search engines don't see Black hat or White hat. All they see is a man or woman with a mission to show up their system.
So it is not the search engines that determine the good guys from the bad guys. Neither is it the industry (my tribe of web designers, programmers, web hosts and marketers and online business owners); you can say what you like. It is your motivation that makes you a Black hat or a White hat.
Next: Are you the next Darth Vader? >>
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