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December 11, 2008
Paid Links: A Black Hat/White Hat Discussion
Those expecting a knock-down, drag-out brawl at the "Black Hat/White Hat" session at SES Chicago may have left a bit disappointed. It looked like the sparks could fly, with Dave Naylor, director of search marketing at Bronco, and Todd Friesen, VP of search at Position Technologies there representing the black hat side, and Eric Enge, president of Stone Temple Consulting and Doug Heil, owner of ihelpyou there defending the white hat side.
But, as Friesen so eloquently said, "As it turns out, Doug's actually a nice guy."
So despite the lack of violence, the session turned out to be an hour-long discussion of techniques that will or will not get you banned by Google, the ethical considerations of search marketing, and a few black-hat tips thrown in for good measure.
Much of the discussion centered on buying links for SEO purposes, which is frowned upon by Google. Naylor and Friesen both said buying links should be allowed, noting that paid links are still relevant, since they bring a user to the page they promise.
"If a user clicks on a link that says 'Buy Viagra', they're going to land on a page that's selling Viagra," Naylor said.
The difference is that Google sees a bought link as an "unnatural" link, since payment has entered the picture. But that argument gets muddied when it comes to bartered links, or other kinds of non-monetary rewards given in exchange for links.
To be safe, Enge says, "Google makes the rules. If we want to have a stable business for the long term, we have to follow them."
The paid links debate is muddied further by the issue of links from trade organizations, which usually charge a membership fee. Enge pointed out that the reason those are OK in Google's eyes is that there is some kind of review process involved, as there is with a quality directory listing like Yahoo or Best of the Web.
In Heil's view, it's a matter of authority. Sites that have earned the authority to vouch for a business, or sponsor an event, for example, should be allowed to do so with a link. The caveat, of course, is that they don't abuse that authority and start linking out without any kind of quality oversight.
Naylor outlined one of his favorite white hat methods of getting links: press releases. When you issue a press release with links in the copy, you will often get people that reprint the release on their site with the links intact. He also recommends getting your site's content into Google News.
Everyone on the panel agreed that dropping the PageRank meter from the Google Toolbar would be a good idea to help curb buying and selling of links for SEO value, and it appears that Google is headed in that direction. "It's a beast they never should have unleashed," Naylor said. It would also help if Google's algorithm stopped relying so heavily on links as a measure of a site's quality, they said.
Posted by Kevin Newcomb on December 11, 2008 3:13 PM
Comments
PageRank has become such a "Mine is bigger than yours" contest, that I for one would be glad to see it go by the way-side.
Yes it gives a great high-level overview of your site - but it is way over-rated. It only partially plays into the search engine results. We see it every day where a PR6 page is stomped by a PR2 -
I think it was Matt Cutts (could be wrong) that said that Keyword Trophies aren't what SEO is all about any more... conversions are. And I agree with that statement.
A recent example is a search on 'stock market' reveals that neopet is on page one. Great - they get a notch on the post for page one, but how many conversions are they going to get from a 'stock market' search?
So yay to the end of the PR toolbar.... I personally think that it will add to the quality of search results, because the masses will stop depending on such a silly number...
Matt
Kettlewell December 11, 2008 5:33 PM
Google actually do not want to remove PR from toolbar otherwise new users will stop installing their toolbar and same way many webmasters will uninstall the toolbar as PR is the mots important reason why people install G's toolbar.
Toolbar is sending them hell lot of data about users...They don't want to loose that !!
The Web Brains December 12, 2008 1:15 AM
It sounds like Black Hat is getting homogenized and the lines may be blurring between the definition of Black/White Hat. Good info, thanks for attending SES and bringing this tidbit back.
TeasasTips December 12, 2008 10:55 PM
I agree with Web Brains. The only reason why I use google toolbar is because of the useful plug-ins..
I don't understand why people still doing black hat where in fact you can just boost your PR without using these types of promotion... it's just a matter of perseverance and hard work.
SEO Tools December 14, 2008 9:00 AM
I don't think Black Hat SEO will ever totally dissapear but diminished if pagerank becomes a non-factor.
Jack Clarke January 3, 2009 8:29 PM
It is clasic ideea, it very simple, i need more information for seo, …Here's a quick excerptEntries in blog pages with high Pagerank increase the value of its own website, whether good content, or even none. It only counts the number of backlinks and their Pagerank linked to a website in search engines to bring forward. …
Interior Design January 6, 2009 5:34 AM
Google make it sound easy to have a competitor’s website banned, just buy a few links and then report to Google. Why doesn’t Google simply devalue the so called paid links? Will Google check that the links were paid and that the owner paid for them? Another question is why do Google allow penalized websites to advertise on adwords?
opseo February 17, 2009 12:17 PM
