Crossing the Line into Black Hat SEO - What About Us?!
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Now I'd like to look at the people who build sites for personal use. These people optimize on their own, without the aid of an external marketing team. They also build sites to sell their products, sell other people's products, and provide information, for the sake of an online presence -- or just to get revenue off advertisements.
Let me emphasize the point I made before: anything that reduces the site user's browsing experience is unethical. Any technique that seeks to deceive the user while bringing him/her to your URL, or which seeks to lock the user into a lose-win situation (lose for him/her, win for you) is a black hat technique.
I assert this not because I am some crusading do-gooder (I consider them hypocrites). I'm also not one of the deluded that argue that all advertising is bad (how else will we present choices to the user?). Rather, I assert this because I believe that SEO experts should have some guidelines which are workable and realistic, as they continue in this wild, wild arena of online advertising.
Examine Your Motives
So now that I have made broad and sweeping assertions, let me narrow it down to specific ways in which SEO techniques put web sites at risk or reduce the user's browsing experience. And I fear that none of us will be found blameless.
"Most men will proclaim every one his own goodness: but a faithful man who can find?"
The Book Of Proverbs, 20:6
Cross the Line
No man wakes up and decides to become a black hat, as top ranking black hat irishwonder notes on www.syndk8.co.uk. When he began it was all as "White as snow."
But the line is crossed when the web designer or SEO decides that "relevant content is hard," and it is this mindset that brings all the goblins out of your fertile mind's dark attic, which is full of SEO black hat tricks.
Next: Saying No >>
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