What if White Hat SEO does not get results?
-
If company A is paying 5k a month and some of that budget is buying links or content that might be in the gray area but is ranking higher than company B that's following the "rules" and paying the same but not showing up at all, what's company B suppose to do?
-
It's not too late for you to start your next career, Robert.
You know how new ventures can be fun.
Or, you can simply do stand-up at the local pub for tips.
-
Damn,
I shoulda been a comedian (is that the right spellin')
-
lol
Loved the "hanky". I'll laugh about it all the way to the office.
Thank you, Robert. nominated for humor of the month award
-
If you are thinking about what type of links you can buy with 5k a month, then you are dying and don't know it yet
If you are thinking of being competitive in terms of white/black hat, I am afraid you are really looking at it the wrong way. You need to figure out what is going to make you a better brand than your competitor and win in areas that spammers wont fight in, like brand, customer service and UX
S
-
I wish I had seen this earlier, quite the interesting question... So company A is "buying links or content that might be in the gray area and outranks CoB for some keywords. Company B is the good guy.
First, and I think foremost, if I am associated with company "B" (someone hand me a hankie at the nobility of being a true martyr), I am going to take two steps back and ask this question: "How do we know that company A is doing anything gray and how do we know what they are doing is the reason for their ranking better than we are?"Why, because believing you are the more noble, smarter, best dressed, etc. is a common refrain of those who are not looking close enough at themselves. So, no, I am not advocating black hat SEO with the hanky comment (because IMO, it is not the brightest SEO - yes those doing it are free to throw the darts now cause frankly I don't care). I made the hanky comment to get your attention as I would my staff when we start to say how good we are. Forget it as it is irrelevant when it comes to the battle.
Our clients are not paying us to be Pollyanna. Yes, there are those who do anything for a ranking and that does not matter. What do I want? I want to out think them. I want to out create them. I want to out motivate my team. I want to argue for quality content, good UI/UX, metrics that make sense over metrics that appear to make sense. I want to stomp my client's competition into an unmitigated hole and own them. Yes, I will do it fair and square as I don't have time to deal with dumb penalties. But, I am not going to throw out a rotator cuff patting myself on the back over the color of a friggin hat. I am going to win because I am smarter, my team is the best, and if all else fails, I will simply outwork them and write the content myself because I know I am that good.
Sorry, if that turned into a rant, but the trap of whose hat was the whitest today is a big one for a pro seo.
Best to all, God I love this forum,
Robert
-
I watched a competitor get absolutely annihilated by Penguin. I've found that black hat SEO will always have a bad ending. It may take them a few months, but aggressive Black Hat always gets found. And I have never heard of White Hat SEO not working. I can only say perhaps you need some help understanding what some White Hat tactics are, especially regarding technical SEO. (Are you talking Technical SEO, External SEO or Front End SEO?) Each has different tactics for success.
-
but not showing up at all
If this is true, and the current SEO has been on the job for a few months, then it is time to evaluate their performance. I am not saying that they are screwing up, just saying that at least a trickle of traffic could be starting to flow.
White hat is slow to produce - especially from a standing start.
-
I have seen this scenario. In fact, on some level, it's playing out for me very personally. That being said, I haven't ever had white hat SEO produce zero results. It has always produced some positive results. Sometimes the results are awesome. Sometimes they are "ok." I have been (and currently am) in a situation where, at least for right now, it appears that a competitor using black hat SEO (I know because I used to work for them), is out-ranking us (we are using strictly white hat) for several key terms.
Frustrating? Yes, of course...and hard to explain to a CEO.
What I will say is this, focus on how the business is doing instead of obsessing over keyword rankings. Why? Because of this: Just because your competitor is outranking you using black hat techniques does not mean their business as a whole is succeeding.
You see, what I also know about this competitor is that they are maybe one bad sales month away from going belly up. All those black hat techniques aren't going to do diddly if they go under....and us? We'll still be here. We'll still be here because we focus on sound, solid business strategies.
The other thing you need to consider is how you are defining "results." For us, results are a combination of higher traffic, better conversation rates, higher AOV, and ultimately higher profit. Do you know that your compay "A" that's using black hat is actually beating you out on the bottom line of revenue? Unless you know for sure, don't assume that they are.
If I were company B, I'd put my blinders on, continue with white hat and make darn sure my business model and marketing plans were rock solid. These are the things that make it possible for businesses to survive long-term. Company A is going to have a lot of cleaning up and 'splaynin to do when they get de-indexed out of Google. If they've hung their hat on that, they won't be around long and Company B will still be standing.
That's my two cents!
Dana
-
I would focus on producing high quality content and getting it syndicated on high authority relevant websites. This strategy is safer in the long run and it is also very difficult to duplicate without putting in all the time and effort.
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
-
What would be the best course of action to nullify negative effects of our website's content being duplicated (Negative SEO)
Hello, everyone About 3 months ago I joined a company that deals in manufacturing of transportation and packaging items. Once I started digging into the website, I noticed that a lot of their content was "plagiarized". I use quotes as it really was not, but they seemed to have been hit with a negative SEO campaign last year where their content was taken and being posted across at least 15 different websites. Literally every page on their website had the same problem - and some content was even company specific (going as far as using the company's very unique name). In all my years of working in SEO and marketing I have never seen something at the scale of this. Sure, there are always spammy links here and there, but this seems very deliberate. In fact, some of the duplicate content was posted on legitimate websites that may have been hacked/compromised (some examples include charity websites. I am wondering if there is anything that I can do besides contacting the webmasters of these websites and nicely asking for a removal of the content? Or does this duplicate content not hold as much weight anymore as it used to. Especially since our content was posted years before the duplicate content started popping up. Thanks,
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Hasanovic0 -
Duplicate categories how to make sure I don't get penalized for this
Hi there How would I go about fixing duplicate categories? My products sell in multiple category areas and some overlap the other - how can I go about making sure that I don't get penalised for this? Each category and content is unique but my advisors offer different tools and insights.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | edward-may0 -
What sources do you use to keep on top of SEO news?
I want to try building an RSS feed of SEO news... but not wanting to find myself drowning in materials As such, looking for a short list of recommendations for keeping on top of SEO developments – the impetus is that I'm still discovering changes that happened 2, 3, even 5 years ago, and I want to try and catch these things as they happen. Thinking something actually from Google may be on the list, but some of these sources are pretty on top of things! Seroundtable.com also comes to mind. But what do you use to keep informed? Thanks 🙂
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | ntcma1 -
Has google done well with these search results?
I am struggling to grasp the new logic behind google, my understanding was that they wanted to return more related searches so that the search matched the results giving people exactly what they are looking for from trusted suppliers. However I work in the vacation rental niche and I have found that the individual long tail searches have started to become less valuable as they are no longer giving the exact property. Here is a screenshot of the top 10 results for the key phrase "10 bedroom villas in quinta do lago" Position 1 & 2 are good results and would be expected however the next 7 positions are completely not related to the search, yes it is quinta do lago. But I am looking specifically for a 10 bedroom villa, none of these pages offer 10 bedroom villas. I actually found my listing outside the top 20 and mine is a 10 bedroom villa in quinta do lago. Does anyone have anything that can enlighten me on this? Thanks Andy 0bqdRJi
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | iprosoftware0 -
Alltop good for SEO?
Are there any negative effects on getting your blog posted on alltop? Good SEO value or not?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | DemiGR0 -
SEO for location outside major city
Hello, I'm hoping to get some opinions on optimising a site for a client based 30 minutes outside of Dublin. Obviously there is a higher search volume for "x in Dublin" than "x in small town". What do you think the best strategies are for incorporating the "Dublin" into keywords? For example is it OK to use phrases like "x near Dublin" or "x in Greater Dublin", or do you think this is a bit misleading? The client in question sells good online, so the customer wouldn't physically have to visit the store. Thanks!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | gcdtechnologies0 -
Here's some more proof white hat SEO works
I guess this is the most logical place to share this with you. I do SEO for many sites. I've recently been focusing on two in particular for the same client. We used Netfirms SEO services to get links--he insisted--which basically consists of writing articles in broken English and placing them all over blog networks with our desired anchor text. On the other site, I simply refused to employ those services. This was the client's main site, and was way too important to mess around with. I built links myself, the legit way. Long story short, for months I watched the shady, black hat site climb and climb in the SERPs, while the white hat one kept falling. This morning, I checked my SEOmoz campaigns and my white hat site went from #8 to #2 and my black hat site went from page 2 to no longer being in the top 50. Just another example of what's been happening with Google lately and how great it is. Interestingly, the black hat site never got a warning in GWT about buying links. Now I just have to figure out a way to break the news to my boss and tell him I told him so without actually using those words.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | UnderRugSwept5 -
Are there *truly* any white-hat link-building tactics?
With our new knowledge -- yielded from J.C. Penney, Forbes, Overstock, content farms, et al -- that the link graph/link profile can be algorithmically mined by search engines to uncover non-natural patterns of links occuring over time, is there any level of link-building that is safe to engage in? If so, then what are those "bright white"-hat tactics that are 100% safe for a site to use?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | jcolman0