Is this a white hat SEO tactic?
-
Hi, I just noticed this website
http://www.knobsandhardware.com
hosts pages like
http://www.knobsandhardware.com/local/hardware/California-Cabinet-Hardware.html
that are filled with permutations of products + cities. These pages rank for these long tail phrases.
Is this considered white hat?
-
This works and is quick/cheap to do.
The much better options is a well written page on each area.
This way each page is 100% optimised for the keyword and contains useful, local, relevant information.
Start with the largest areas (on search volume) and add a few more pages each week/month.
If you have a list of areas as large as this then use slightly larger areas and target the big town for the page but also make references to the smaller villages within that page. Means the higher volume is well optimised and the lower volume pages are semi-optimised on a relevant page.
Interlink each of these pages to 2-3 of the others to create low OBL, relevant, varied, internal linking - rather than a single page like above with links to all of the pages.
-
This is definitely grey hat in my opinion.
If a customer types in "Jamul Cabinet Hardware" and lands on that page, how many are honestly going to convert from there? I would anticipate their bounce rates to be huge.
You are better off selecting a few key areas/cities you want to target and create customised landing pages for each. Landing pages with useful information based on that location - that will convert a lot more than this crappy spammy technique.
-
White - Only for the consumer.
Black - Only for the search engine.
Gray - Where most of us live.
That example is a dark shade of gray. I mean who in their right mind would find that second example helpful?
-
That's a funny pile of spam. Thanks for sharing!
Sounds like you're considering a version of this for your site? Even if it does rank, how well do think it converts? The only point in ranking is to convert and only a human can convert. Therefore any landing page must be first and foremost human-friendly.
I would classify this as gray hat but not the type of gray hat I would wear in public.
-
This isn't white-hat in my opinion, its grey-hat. Its a huge list that provides no benefit to anyone reading the page. On the other hand, they're only making their own site a nightmare, not anyone elses - hence the grey instead of black.
I'm surprised this ranks at all, this page should be recognized as zero quality.
-
The thing about "White Hat" is all up to how you define it. When any person looks at the page in question, it clearly looks like a spammy technique. Unfortunately, this method does work - otherwise people wouldn't do it.
I doubt this would pass any human review as being a quality page, and there are many legit ways to take the idea of the product/city page to make it provide a quality experience for the user.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Are CDN's good or bad for SEO? - Edmonton Web
Hello Moz folks, We just launched a new website: www.edmontonweb.ca It is now ranking on page 2 in our city. The website is built on Wordpress and we have made every effort to make it load faster. We have enabled the right caching and we have reduced the file size. Still, some of our local competitors have lower load times and more importantly lower ttfb's. Is a CDN the right answer? I've read articles demonstrating that Clowd Flare decreased a websites rankings. Is there a better CDN to use, or a propper way to implement Clowd Flare? Thank you very much for your help! Anton,
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Web3Marketing87
LAUNCH Edmonton0 -
Looking for recent bad SEO / black hat example such as JC Penney example from 2011
I am giving a presentation in a few weeks and looking for a "what not to do" larger brand example that made poor SEO choices to try and game Google with black hat tactics. Any examples you can point me to?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | jfeitlinger0 -
Does IP Blacklist cause SEO issues?
Hi, Our IP was recently blacklisted - we had a malicious script sending out bulk mail in a Joomla installation. Does it hurt our SEO if we have a domain hosted on that IP? Any solid evidence? Thanks.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | bjs20100 -
Negative SEO attack working amazingly on Google.ca
We have a client www.atvandtrailersales.com who recently (March) fell out of the rankings. We checked their backlink file and found over 100 spam links pointing at their website with terms like "uggboots" and "headwear" etc. etc. I submitted a disavow link file, as this was obviously an attack on the website. Since the recent Panda update, the client is back out of the rankings for a majority of keyword phrases. The disavow link file that was submitted back in march has 90% of the same links that are still spamming the website now. I've sent a spam report to Google and nothing has happened. I could submit a new disavow link file, but I'm not sure if this is worth the time. '.'< --Thanks!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | SmartWebPros1 -
Is my SEO strategy solid moving forward (post panda update) or am I doing risky things that might hurt my sites down the road?
Hey all, WIhen I first started doing SEO, I was encouraged by several supposed experts that it was a good idea to buy links from "respectable" sources and as well make use of SEO experimentation offered on Fiverr. I did that a lot for the clients I represented not knowing if this was going to hurt. But now after the latest Google shift, I am realizing that this was stupid and thus deserving of the ranking drops I have received. In the aftermath, I want to list out here what I am doing now to try to build better and stronger rankings for my sites using white hat techniques only... Below is a list of what I'm doing. Please let me know if any of these are bad choices and I will immediately dump them. Also, If i am not including some good options, please let me know that too. I am really embarrassed and humbled by this and could use whatever help you can offer. Thanks in advance for your help... What am I doing now? *Writing quality articles for external blogs with keyword links back to sites *Taking the above articles and spinning them at SEOLINKVINE to create several articles *Writing quality articles for every site's internal blog and using keywords to link out to other sites that are on different servers - All articles are original, varied and not duplicate content. *Writing quality, relevant articles and submitting them to places like Ezine *Signing clients up for Facebook, Yelp, Twitter, etc so they have a social presence *Working to fix mistakes with onsite issues (mirror sites, duplicate page titles, etc.) *Writing quality keyword-rich unique content on each page of each site *Submitting URL listings and descriptions to directories like JoeAnt, REALS and business.com (Any other good ones that people can recommend that give good link juice?) *Doing competitive research and going after highly authoritative links that our competitors have That is about it... HELP!!! Thanks again
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | creativeguy0 -
Is this SEO correct?
Please view website http://www.staddonsbeds.co.uk. In the footer is the keywords the client is aiming for. These pages have been created separately to the sitemap. Is this tactic and pages white hat seo or is this considered black hat seo such as gateway pages? Could you please confirm Thanks Paul
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | paulbaguley0 -
How do I find out if a competitor is using black hat methods and what can I do about it?
A competitor of mine has appeared out of nowhere with various different websites targetting slightly different keywords but all are in the same industry. They don't have as many links as me, the site structure and code is truly awful (multiple H1's on same page, tables for non-tabular data etc...) yet they outperform mine and many of my other competitors. It's a long story but I know someone who knows the people who run these sites and from what I can gather they are using black hat techniques. But that is all I know and I would like to find out more so I can report them.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | kevin11